The WP objectives comprise of evaluation of existing standards, techniques, and methods (research results) relevant and applicable within the VIDE project. Standards of the OMG, WfMC (Workflow Management Coalition) and component software engineering are to be given particular attention. Existing tools and software environments eligible as candidates for the VIDE project development environment are to be studied and evaluated. The research results to provide the theoretical base for the VIDE architecture, in particular in the areas of MDA, query languages, visual programming as well as development methodologies are to be evaluated. The work under this WP concentrates on analysis and selection of the industrial standards, analysis of the eligible software tools and environments, Analysis and selection of the VIDE project research base, research upon specific SME needs.
This WP is to provide the formal definition of the VIDE language complying to UML action semantics, enabling both visual and textual code representation with no losses in conversion between these representations. The language should have the features of composability, evolvability, flexibility, robustness and should naturally support light/agile development methodologies. The language should naturally lead to a strongly context-aware fully visual code editor. The editor should in any particular context provide to the user a set of possible choices available. This will enable better code quality by eliminating most of the possible bugs already during coding. Within the WP2 several tasks are to be completed :the early prototype of the VIDE code editor, representing actions in VIDE ,representing queries in VIDE, supporting SOA and Web services in VIDE, mapping VIDE language semantics into a repository.
Software composition is an important factor of MDA processes that mainly use object oriented target platforms. The goal of this work package is to investigate integration strategies for adding advanced software composition in the platform-independent phase of MDA processes. A knowledge base for most suitable approaches will be developed to offer design recommendations to project participants building the VIDE compiler. As theoretical foundation of the VIDE architecture the impact of MDA (action languages, model compilers), query languages, visual programming as well as the development methodologies are to be evaluated. Besides functional aspects, non-functional aspects, such as performance, the ability for distribution and quality aspects (see WP4), that are especially important for the composition of large scale business solutions, will be investigated. In particular the work will be done on practical evaluation of AO modelling and composition in MDA, provision of a knowledge base for AO software composition in MDA processes, the specification of the Aspect-Oriented composition mechanisms to be supported by VIDE.
In order to support the modeller of a PIM during his work information about possible threats to the quality (in respect to ISO 9126) of the PIM should be indicated as early as possible. In this work package quality defects such as architectural smells, anti-patterns, and design flaws are investigated explore new quality defects that might occur on the model level are investigated. The knowledge explored in this work package will be used to develop a module of VIDE that discovers quality defects from the PIM and annotates its textual and visual representation. Researching and summarizing existing quality defects, modelling the information- and defect model for MDA, modelling domain-specific parts of the models, Development of techniques for PIM-specific quality defects, the quality defect discovery module will be performed.
Design an advanced environment for the VIDE user interface. The VIDE GUI is to support the stages of prototyping, programming, debugging and documenting (including the documentation of legacy software to prepare its migration to platform-independent level). Research in model based interface design will be synthesised with study of existing techniques in order to design an improved visual presentation. The following tasks were defined for this WP - methodology and tools for visual action specification, visual code editor, visual action prototyping, visual tracing and debugging, visual documenting of legacy applications.
Provide a translation from the platform independent application specification in VIDE to reliable verification platforms. It is needed to provide an executable result of VIDE modelling. It is also intended to verify the adequacy of recent OMG specifications oriented towards executable models and perhaps to suggest their extensions or improvements. Thus mapping to an object database platform, mapping to common application server platforms will be accomplished during this WP.
The objective of this WP is to integrate development process improvement opportunities brought by VIDE features with the paradigm of business process centric software development. Analysis of Process Modelling and execution languages definition of business-process-driven development process development of a process description and execution language for VIDE were defined as the tasks of this WP.
The objective is to develop a complete specification of the VIDE architecture comprising all system interfaces and functional modules. The project approach is to avoid unnecessary mundane effort of the VIDE software development, wherever possible. Hence, the starting point will be integration of existing software platforms and software prototypes already developed by the project partners. The work will comprise of integration of VIDE within a commercial MDA, integration of VIDE within a commercial Web services tool, Integration of VIDE within a commercial workflow system ,integration of VIDE with the ONAR platform, integration of VIDE within a standard software system for SMEs , Design of the VIDE architecture.
Development of all of the modules of the prototype VIDE development platform (programming environment). Development of the VIDE prototype incorporating all research results established within the research and design tasks. The prototype is to be based on selected software platforms enhancing their capabilities with advanced visual programming features as well as with the fully model driven programming capability. The prototype will be available on the Internet for testing and evaluation by the consortium partners.
In regard to the exploitation aspects of this WP the objectives are to envision, implement and maintain a communications policy with the external world, and conduct a proactive exploitation strategy that will affect the VIDE results positioning within the scientific / technological communities and - most importantly - the corporate world and the market. In regard to the dissemination aspects of this WP the objectives are to: promote project activities and disseminate results to potential users, potential customers, the EU/IST authorities and every interested corporate entity or scientist in- or outside of the European Union. Apart from stimulating dissemination events this WP are assigned the following tasks: VIDE market structure analysis , VIDE business scenarios and market strategies, creation of VIDE e-learning system.
Evaluation of VIDE in real-life use cases will be performed. The extended toolset developed in WP9 will be used to develop standard applications for the SME market in order to validate the VIDE approach in the area of standard software development for real-life industrial use cases. The activities will be based mainly upon the installed customer base of the consortium partners. VIDE applications and modules will be designed and developed basing upon the needs of European SMEs defined in WP1. Then the applications and modules will be published in the prototype Web-library. VIDE wrappers for relational databases and XML (task leader PJIIT): A VIDE wrapper will be developed to enable visual specification of code processing existing relational and XML data sources. The measurable results of the project will be verified in a competition of programmers with and without VIDE enabled development tools and in a course of VIDE for individuals with little IT-experience.
