Decorated Model Architecture for Efficient Model-Driven Application Development

• US 20090138844A1
• Filed: 11/26/2007
• Published: 05/28/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 11/26/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Prager, Ilan, Hexter, Efrat, Kossowsky, Yehuda, Melamed, Boris, Halberstadt, Benjamin
• Granted Patent: US 8,095,570 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/104
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/10 Requirements analysis; Specification techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/24 Object-oriented
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/70 Software maintenance or management

Abstract

A method for implementing a model-driven architecture, including defining a principal model having a plurality of classes, references, attributes, and associations between any of the classes, the model configured to facilitate the automatic generation of at least one resource for use by a computer-executable application, where a change to the principal model subsequent to performing the automatic generation requires the automatic generation be performed again in order to effect the change for use by the application, defining a decoration model having a class, reference, and attribute for any corresponding one of the primary model classes, references, and attributes, where a change to the decoration model subsequent to performing the automatic generation does not require the automatic generation be performed again in order to effect the change for use by the application, mapping the decoration model to the principal model, and storing both of the models on a computer-readable medium.

Claims

1. A method for implementing a model-driven architecture, the method comprising:

defining a principal model having a plurality of classes, references, attributes, and associations between any of said classes, wherein said model is configured to facilitate the automatic generation of at least one resource for use by a computer-executable application, and wherein a change to said principal model subsequent to performing said automatic generation requires that said automatic generation be performed again in order to effect said change for use by said application;

defining a decoration model having a class, reference, and attribute for any corresponding one of said primary model classes, references, and attributes, wherein a change to said decoration model subsequent to performing said automatic generation does not require that said automatic generation be performed again in order to effect said change for use by said application;

mapping said decoration model to said principal model; and

storing both of said models on a computer-readable medium.

2. A method according to claim 1 and further comprising defining in said principal model a class representing a package of any of said classes, references, and attributes of said decoration model.

3. A method for using a decoration model in an application environment, the method comprising:

providing a computer-executable application with access to resources generated using a principal model;

instantiating a decoration model associated with said principal model for use by said application; and

providing said application with access to an object of said decoration model responsive to a request by said application to access an object of said principal model where said decoration model object corresponds to said principal model object.

4. A method according to claim 3 and further comprising:

receiving a call from said application to a method defined in said principal model object; and

passing said call from said decoration model object to said principal model object.

5. A method according to claim 3 and further comprising:

receiving a call from said application to a method defined in said decoration model object; and

servicing said call at said decoration model object.

6. A method according to claim 3 and further comprising:

making said instantiated decoration model globally accessible to a plurality of said applications;

for each request by any of said applications to access an object associated with either said principal model or said decoration model;

creating a new thread to handle said request;

assigning said decoration model to a thread-local variable in said new thread; and

servicing any thread-internal code function calls to access said decoration model object via the thread-local variable of its thread;

making a change to said decoration model available to new threads by starting a new thread that reads said changed decoration model, instantiating said changed decoration model, and deserializing said changed decoration model into its own thread-local variable; and

replacing said globally accessible decoration model with said changed decoration model while any of said applications are executed.

7. A method according to claim 6 and further comprising:

forcing any new incoming requests from said applications to wait until said globally accessible decoration model is replaced by said changed model; and

assigning said changed decoration model to thread-local variables of said new requests after said changed decoration model is instantiated.

8. A method according to claim 6 and further comprising:

checking for pointer equality between any of said thread-local variables and said globally accessible decoration model during the post-processing of any of said requests; and

displaying a message if said pointers are not the same.