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IBM and Microsoft square off on software development models
A set of articles and interviews discussing software lifecycle models have come out talking to Grady Booch of Rational (now part of IBM) about Microsoft's Team System product, and Rick LaPlante, Microsoft's general manager of Visual Studio Team System. It's an interesting back-and-forth about Team System and its goals and ability to achieve them.
Notable highlights:(To Rick LaPlante) Q: How do you plan to support UML [Unified Modeling Language] in the platform?
That's a good question. The way I think about UML is UML is an interesting set of designers in a metamodel for a set of challenges you would face during development—class design, sequence design and those types of things. Moving up into more of the "what" instead of the "how."
The challenge that we have with UML—and I think it's certainly as long as I've been over the last four or five years in this business running the Microsoft enterprise tools business we've been consistent with this—is that UML is a good set of tools for a certain set of problems. But it reminds me of the old adage: If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. UML has an extensibility model that allows you to describe other, what we would call, domains. Like things like BPEL [Business Process Execution Language] or Web services for that matter.
The challenge with the UML model is everything has to be described in the terms of what UML already understands. And that's kind of like saying a thumbtack is like a nail. So I want to talk about the world of screws. So it's like a nail, except you don't use a hammer; it's either Phillips or regular and it's got threading and their national standard or other. So that's an extensibility model for UML.
We actually believe that there is a better way. And we didn't make this up, quite frankly. The better way was thoroughly described by the SEI [Software Engineering Institute] out of Carnegie Mellon [University] as domain-specific languages. The notion of domain-specific languages is that you shouldn't say a screw is like a nail except for all of these different things. (To Grady Booch) Q: Microsoft has stressed the importance of modeling, but they've said not strictly UML and MDA (Model-Driven Architecture). But if they don't pursue that, at some point will their strategy peter out, or will they pave their own new way for the industry to follow?
Well, increasingly you see Microsoft, and I can't speak fully for them, but looking on the outside, increasingly they're taking the non-standards/open standards route. Even the statements they've made about not necessarily supporting UML is another stake in that direction. Is that a long-term sustainable strategy? Hard to say, except that IBM Rational is placing its bets on the open marketplace, primarily because in the kinds of systems people are building these days, there is a far greater need for interoperability, and that demands a common understanding of standards against which we build all sorts of things. So we think that kind of openness is necessary for the current and future generation of systems.
I wish Microsoft the best. That strategy Microsoft is pursuing is one that we've intentionally not because we view the openness to be far more important. Read Microsoft's VSTS Goal: Creating a Mass Market for Enterprise Tools and IBM Rational: Rival Microsoft Faces Uphill Battle for the two sides of the debate.
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Message #132465
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Its Ambiguous
"... there is a far greater need for interoperability, and that demands a common understanding of standards against which we build all sorts of things.."
What does this mean?, interopeability amongst standards or interoperablity amongst all sorts of things?.. Grady we already have web services (after beating RMI,CORBA) for both of the things you are worrying. We are talking about with in an enterprise, not across the enterprise.
Microsoft is taking Modelling as value, and to me its supporting OMG/UML and other things. Now wether it will be successful or goes down the same path time will tell, at this point no one of two can claim they are right, both have to be open for something meaningful to come out. Because we don't have what we want right now. So lets see.
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Message #132685
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On the subject of Micrsoft and UML
Wind back to 1994 when I first joined the industry. We had endless fights about whether RDD, RCC, OMT etc. were the best methodologies for designing systems All of the methods were very similar, and they all contained annoying inconsistencies so that the same concepts would be described in different notations which would confuse the hell out of any assembled team of developers/architects and the like.
I've used UML on every major project I've worked on for the past five years or so and it has made my life an amazing amount easier. Developers understand it and can use it to explain their thoughts quickly, architects and designers also understand and can adapt to using it very quickly. Although aimed at 00 development languages it adapts surprisingly well to everything from messaging driven SOA architectures, straight procedural systems, and weird hybrids like Visual Basic 6. I've also used it on two Web Service projects (one J2EE and the other .NET/Websphere hybrid) and it was more than up to the challenge there as well. Now as I understand what Microsoft is proposing is, rather than supporting UML design correctly (which they've never actually done and are effectively saying they won't), they want to create a new (presumably .NET centric) UML-like design language. So they're pushing us backward to '94 again, only this time with the added disadvantage of vendor lock-in. Worse, they're mixing it around with UML inside the product so that architects who learn this tool and not a UML standards based tool such as the IBM/Rational or Select Enterprise will think they're using UML notation when they're not.
If they manage to get the MS developer community on board (and past history suggests that they will) then Microsoft shops will be talking about design in their own language and the rest of the development world in theirs. This may work well for Microsoft from a tying your developers down point of view but isn't something I particularly welcome. On the whole I wish Microsoft would focus more of its efforts on working with and improving existing standards rather than constantly trying to undermine them.
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