0000000001072481
AUTHOR
Jan Ernsting
Towards a Reference Architecture for Model-Driven Business Apps
Model-driven development techniques have been proposed for cross-platform app development. Typically, an individual domain-specific language (DSL) is used. The MD² framework consists of a DSL for business apps and generators, which transform a domain model to native platform code. Prior research on it focused on language and general generator design, this paper accentuates the code generation stage. A reference architecture for the generated apps is proposed to accelerate the development of new generators for which architectural decisions had been made on ad-hoc basis up to now. Moreover, generators are going to expose similar structures that facilitate maintenance. Our proposal takes MD²'s…
Refining a Reference Architecture for Model-Driven Business Apps
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How Cross-Platform Technology Can Facilitate Easier Creation of Business Apps
Applications for mobile devices – apps – have seen unprecedented growth in importance. Ever better apps keep propelling the proliferation of mobile computing. App development is rather easy, particularly if it is based on Web technology. However, implementing apps that are user friendly and useful in the long-run is cumbersome. Thereby, it typically is expensive for corporate developers. Nonetheless, business apps are embraced by enterprises. To overcome the overhead of developing separately for multiple platforms and to mitigate the problems of device fragmentation, cross-platform development approaches are employed. While many such approaches exist, few have found widespread usage. In thi…
Achieving Business Practicability of Model-Driven Cross-Platform Apps
- Due to the incompatibility of mobile device platforms such as Android and iOS, apps have to be developed separately for each target platform. Cross-platform development approaches based on Web technology have significantly improved over the last years. However, since they do not lead to native apps, these frameworks are not feasible for all kinds of business apps. Moreover, the way apps are developed is cumbersome. Advanced cross-platform approaches such as MD2, which is based on model-driven development (MDSD) techniques, are a much more powerful yet less mature choice. We discuss business implications of MDSD for apps and introduce MD2 as our proposed solution to fulfill typical require…
Generating App Product Lines in a Model-Driven Cross-Platform Development Approach
Within software product lines (SPL) similar software products are created based on common features. We applied this versatile approach to cross-platform app development by extending the domain-specific language (DSL) of an established model-driven development framework. The goal was to support the formulation of coherent building blocks of business use cases, referred to as workflow elements. While the former implementation already abstracted from technical details and provided the possibility to reuse low level features, it now enables to build business apps by combining coherent, self-contained workflow elements. Providing this support on the language level facilitates reusable component-…
Model-Driven cross-platform apps: Towards business practicability
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Reengineering an Approach to Model-Driven Development of Business Apps
Despite a perceived convergence in mobile application development, platforms such as Android and iOS remain largely incompatible. Supporting multiple platforms currently requires either separate native development (for each system) or utilization of a cross-platform development framework. While many such frameworks have been developed, only few are mature and even less are used widely, let alone commercially. Moreover, they typically are limited with regard to performance and to preserving a native look & feel. Worst of all, their usefulness for business apps is limited due to their low level of abstraction. In this paper, we take a closer look at an academic prototype that employs model-dr…