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TechEd2004: Tools for Architecture: Developing SOA (ARC400)
Keith Short started out by saying how lucky he felt to be able to work on a version 1 product at Microsoft. He also alluded to the fact that the title of the talk used SOA to hook you in. It worked as the room was packed. :)
This talk was great. It was really about a small subset of the new Team Developer tools. Keith was going to go through the Team Architecture portion, talking specifically about modelling (apps, deployment, infrastructure, classes).
He knows that people have a bad taste in their mouths from the years of CASE... and the PROMISE that CASE proponents made. He thinks that there is much value in modelling, and that it is natural to move up the abstraction chain, and that Microsoft will learn from the mistakes made in the CASE world.
Some of the talk had a similar feel to the talk on the Metropolis. Today we are still hand stiching code, we are at a fairly low level, and each application seems to be starting from scratch.
We should be looking to raise the abstraction again. UML wasn't the answer for many reasons, but one is that the language is too generic, and it is hard to validate to it (semantically). Keith thinks that the answer is not to build the uber-modelling language, but that the success we HAVE seen is with DSLs (Domain Specific Languages). The Team Developer tool will eventually allow you to use their engine, to create your own DSLs. Keith has a vision of building product lines. His analogy was with washing machines. GE may have a line of the 500, 500E, and 500F. They may differ in that the motor may have different speeds, and the size may be a little different, but much is shared. He thinks that we will move more to this mode in the future.
Keith put up a DSL: Telephone Billing Language
This was based on a real example from the UK (by the way I have noticed that a lot of the Microsoft guys are british!). It was a pictorial language, that looked a little like a rules engine. The language elements were very high level, and carried a lot of information with them.
Pictorial is ONE type, but it isn't the only one. Depending on your problem, your DSL may have elements of:
Declaritive
Textual
Pictorial
Procedural
In fact we are doing this now with items such as: the Forms designer, SQL, Regep, etc.
He told us how if you tool is generates reams of code, you will not succeed. Round-tripping doesn't work. Microsoft wants "Tripless" (Martin Fowler term). The solution should build on "framework completion", and models can even stack on eachother to help with the abstractions.
On a few of the slides for these domains, you would see the header "Aspects", and under them some cross cutting concerns. I asked Keith about this after his talk, and he said that Microsoft sees a lot of value in modularizing cross cutting concerns, but is scared by code injection. "That is the point!" Microsoft gets AO, and wants to use it in some way in its tools. They need to know that it isn't about using code-injection, and they are already thinking in the right way. There is such a natural fit for AO in the high level languages that they are building in this modelling framework, and I hope they take a serious closer look at AO and don't get caught up in some of the implementation details.
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Message #123752
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Tools for Architecture
Well, it looks like MS is going the MDA way, but with their own approach, without UML.
It looks promising, but I have many concerns about this kind of tools and how they will behave in a real environment. Keeping design synchronized with code is almost impossible without using a modeling tool that generates ALL the code (Tripless), and that looks very difficult by now. One of the reasons is that modeling a whole solution to the right detail is kind of impossible with current tools, but I've thought many times about "stacking" models and a tool that would let you "zoom" in and out from your model (in terms of abstraction).
If they get this done it would be great and it could mean a huge strike against MDA, IMHO. But I'm still very skeptic :)
Narciso
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Message #123830
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Tools for Architecture
I'm yet to be convinced that this MDA hype is actually going to produce anything of value any time soon. To produce a real application, you eventually need the expressive power of a general-purpose programming language somewhere. Modern OO languages already have powerful abstraction mechanisms - I can code at a high level in Java (oops, I mean C#!) just as well as by dragging bubbles in a design tool, given a suitable class design for my particular domain. I think patterns and language development work are more promising fields for improving productivity.
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Message #123862
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Pleasure
Yeah they are very interesting.
I think a lot of people have been burnt in the past, but part of me really thinks that surely there are better abstractions for certain tasks. This is why I am hopefuly that the DSL path that Microsoft has taken is fruitful.
It is important that they have realised that the generic "model everything in this way" approach won't work, and there each task needs its own solution.
It's great stuff :)
Dion
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Message #123916
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!MDA
Many thanks for the links, Dion, they're in fact very interesting.
When I said that Keith / Microsoft was going the MDA way, I meant that they are trying to achieve (almost) the same goal than MDA, but using their own approach.
I've extracted this from Steve Cook's column on DSL vs MDA (linked from Keith's blog):
Only the emergence of technologies that synergistically
combine models, patterns, frameworks, and code into an agile software
development process will avoid the CASE trap.
That's exactly where I wanted to get :)
After reading the links, I can not but agree with Keith and Steve. UML is good for drawing on napkins, to make yourself clear when you're planning a system, or to produce documentation, but it isn't well suited to produce code or to guarantee a good system. I've seen UML-filled analysis documents that lead to bad software and worst code, due to the lack of ability to get code from the design among many other things.
I'm very happy with the momentum that agile technologies are gaining, and with the increasing knowledge on patterns. There're many issues to deal with, though. Agile approaches, like XP, don't like modeling (formal) nor they like patterns, for example.
I've suffered too much in the past, enough to be very enthusiastic about these topics. :)
Finally, I would be happier if MS could align with standards like UML, but anyway, I'm almost anxious to see these new tools from Microsoft :)
Narciso
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Message #123985
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RE: Developing SOA
Although it sounds as though SOA was glossed over in this presentation the role of MDA or some form of metamodel is interesting with respect to its future. Is the loose coupling of services to the ESB (Enterprise Services Bus) implemented via abstract models of the business functinality of the service or is it a pure consequence of the design of the application protocol between the service and the bus? I would lean strongly towards the protocols however there may be an advantage to the metamodels with respect to designing that adapter layer of bridges and transfer vectors between the service and the bus. Especially where organizations utilize complex applications connecting to an ESB (e.g. an ERP), metamodel flexibility of the adapter layer would be desirable.
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Message #124038
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Pleasure
Dion, Those links are great. This site is evolving pretty good with lots of good stuff. Good job
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Message #124441
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Actually modeling is not anathema to agile...
The idea is that you use what you need documentation-wise given your needs, rather than produce a dogmatic collection of documentation. This applies to models, requirements, etc... where agile diverges is with the notion of doing extensive upfront design. The principal is to do what you need when you need it and expect change.
As far as patterns are concerned, they are an aspect of good software design and by no means are contrary to agile principles in and of themselves. One of the side effects of using patterns is that they provide a common vernacular for developers to describe common ideas, which dramatically increases communication. This a cornerstone of agile approaches.
That all being said, there are MDA practitioners out there who describing their tools as "agile" regardless of whether or not they have nothing to do with agile methods. There is no tool out there that can make you agile, rather it has everything to do with the values and practices in your organization.
Dilzio
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Message #124720
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Actually modeling is not anathema to agile...
I agree that modeling and agile can go hand-in-hand. In fact we are pursuing a line of argument that claims agile methods require some form of modeling in order to scale up to larger projects. But it's not just modeling. It requires methods and processes too. See our emerging story on Software Factories in my blog. Also see article on Scaling Up Agile written by Alan Wills who is part of my team at Microsoft.
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Message #124762
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TechEd2004: Tools for Architecture: Developing SOA (ARC400)
This is an interesting article from IBM. I think components will be a major point of discussion as a common definition is created and they are addressed in this article.
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Message #309758
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Re: !MDA
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