Barbed Model-Driven Software Development: A Case Study

When thinking of MDE, the immediate understanding is that models drive software development, in the sense that the software is constructed by transforming models from higher levels of abstraction to the point where we reach a model which is executable with the desired degree of quality characteristics. What tends to be less evident, is that, precisely in order to reach the desired quality, many other models are used in the verification and assessment of the solutions under consideration at the various stages of development. That is, looking at the development process, besides a spine of model transformations moving from highly abstract, domain related models down to concrete platform related models (programs), we can see a number of barbs, relating models in the spine to specialized models that permit specific analysis of parts of the software. In this paper we report on some preliminary work on understanding Barbed Model–Driven Software Development. We are taking an experimental attitude, designing and implementing a barb, using specific technologies and verification tools. The goal is twofold: to get acquainted with the technologies, and to provide a first assessment of their suitability for subsequent explorations. In the experiment experiment the barb deals with the verification of properties of a SOA system modelled in UML.