DaemonX: Design, Adaptation, Evolution, and Management of Native XML (and More Other) Formats

Abstract

The most common applications of the today's IT world are information systems. The problems related to their design and implementation have sufficiently been solved. However, the true problems occur when an IS is already deployed and user requirements change. Currently this situation requires a skilled IT expert who knows all system components and, hence, is able to identify and modify all the affected parts. However, not always we have such an expert, whereas for complex systems it is a very hard and error-prone task. In this paper we introduce DaemonX -- an evolution management framework, which enables to manage evolution of complex applications efficiently and correctly. Using the idea of plug-ins, it enables to model almost any kind of a data format (currently XML, UML, ER, and BPMN). Since it preserves relationships among the modeled constructs, it naturally supports propagation of changes to all related affected parts. We describe the general proposal of the framework and, then, its architecture and implementation.