Sage: Generating Applications with Uml and Components

This thesis presents a prototype application generation tool, SAGE (SeaBank Application Generation Environment), that demonstrates how the Unified Modeling Language (UML) can be used as a domain specific application generation language for component or framework-based software development. The UML-based extensible CASE tool, Rational Rose, was extended to create SAGE for developing applications that use the experimental SeaBank framework. We have learned that the extensibility features of UML and extensible CASE tools allow new tools to be created that support reuse-based software development with domain-specific components and frameworks. These tools can automate the customization and reuse of software components and help shorten the learning curve involved in reusebased software development. These tools also insure that higher-level models of applications reflect reusable software components and frameworks in a consistent manner. SAGE does simplify the development of SeaBank applications. More importantly, by examining how SAGE uses UML, Rational Rose, and the SeaBank framework, we can discuss of the advantages and disadvantages of each and gain insights into how they could be improved to work better together. These insights can help show how future tools, modeling languages, and reusable software could be structured to take full advantage of model-based development and model-based tools. To Family and Friends for their constant support