Discussion on MDD
In the Model Driven Software Network”s forum, there is a current discussion on regeneration of code from models.
The discussion centres around whether the only way to get maximum benefit from Model Based Development (like Gen) is to regenerate completely from the model. From reading the threads, it seems that many people have tools and/or processes which allow 90+% generation from model, and that they have to allow for a certain amount of hand-coding and tweaking the generated code.
Of course, in a Gen environment (EABs aside) we get 100% code generation ready for deployment. The tooling is geared up for this, so I can’t understand why anyone would want to have tools that don’t support 100% code generation. Many parts of the discussion seem to hint that some code generated by the tools that the participants use is wrong and NEEDS manual overriding – something which is alien in the Gen world.
Check out the discussion and see what you think !
I agree – some of the others in the discussiuon seemed to be advocating tweaking generated code – NOT The source model itself (such that code tweaks make the model out-of-sync with the “real world”).
Any situation that allows models to be out of sync with the child deployed application should be discouraged……
I don’t know about others, but what I said on that discussion is that I can, using my ABSE methodology, generate 100% code from the model. However, there is one-off code that is easier to include directly, without having the overhead of creating a metamodel (or template for that matter) just to be used once.
For this to be effective, the ABSE’s meta metamodel must allow for custom code to be seamlessly included in a model.
So I never tweak the generated code. I tweak the custom code that belongs to the model.