UML/MDA Reality Check: Heterogenous Architecture Style

Abstract

This talk looks at the OMG’s Model-Driven Architecture initiative and at UML from the perspective of an innovative approach to engineering software for space missions at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The Mission Data System (MDS) project at JPL breaks the conventional mold of space möission software blending two heterogenous software architecture styles: state analysis (the idea that "state", operations involving state and expressions of intent about state are at the core of all space-based systems and therefore must form the central basis for engineering such systems) and explicit software architecture (the idea that component architecture establishes the elements of software design and of their coherent integration.) From a modeling perspective, state analysis is a domain-specific software architecture style just like component architecture is an engineering-specific software architecture style. The heterogenous composition of multiple styles in MDS is an example of extreme architecture engineering. This talk will describe how this approach stretches in many ways the current state of practice and tool support in UML and MDA into the realm of bleeding edge software engineering research.