Modeling supports us in communicating and understanding when we create software solutions. As communication and understanding are two of the most critical aspects of delivering software solutions - modeling is a valuable tool that should not be overlooked. Agile Modeling adheres to and aligns with Agile values and principles and should be one of the practices within your Agile toolkit.
Sparx Systems, an Austrian based vendor of UML tools, has recently published version 9.2 of Enterprise Architect. The new version adds features like enhanced simulation capability and support for describing ontologies.
Business-IT alignment, now part of mainstream EA, is increasingly viewed as an unnecessary overhead in a world where IT is a core business entity in the enterprise. Anirban Ray proposes a model driven approach to creating a SOE which makes a core assumption that IT is an integral part of the business which leads to business focused service offerings.
Text-based DSLs are useful, an custom editor for the DSL is even better. Concrete allows to build customized editors for JSON-based DSLs/Models. InfoQ talks to Concrete's creator Martin Thiede.
Just Enough Software Architecture book, by author George Fairbanks, focuses on a risk-driven approach to software architecture development. George explains Architecture Modeling process from different perspectives such as Engineering Use Models, Conceptual, Domain, Design and Code Models. InfoQ spoke with George about the book and his thesis project on design fragments in software framework.
Pedro J. Molina discusses the concepts behind UI and challenges met trying to model user interfaces, and how code generation can be used to create UIs.
Richard Pawson discusses a case study of a large pure OO project for the Irish government, presenting the challenges met, the reason for choosing pure OO, and lessons learned implementing it.
Mike Williams, co-creator of Erlang discusses the history of and influences on Erlang as well as languages and paradigms used at Ericsson for large scale development and embedded programming.
Larva is a runtime monitoring system that uses AspectJ to weave monitoring into Java code and can check the correctness of the program using an FSM; Elarva is an Erlang version of the tool.
Composite Software offers a new level of granularity when compared to SaaS (Software as a Service). Composite Software is about enabling "right-sourcing", i.e. move (or keep) arbitrary small or large elements of functionality wherever it is the most cost effective to operate them, not just entire systems. Economically, "right-sourcing" is far more efficient than "outsourcing" and SaaS. The goal of this book is start by understanding today’s software construction processes and technologies and explore why and how it should be evolved to support core composition mechanisms.
