Meta Model Driven Framework for the Integration and Extension of Application Components

Abstract

Generally software is seen as something that is purchased off-the-shelf. However, this perception is incorrect, as off-the-shelf software represents only 15 percent of all software development. The remaining 85 percent represents specialized software developed for large organizations to help them meet their unique requirements. The competitive nature of such organizations typically results in rapidly evolving software requirements. Component-based software engineering techniques lend themselves favorably to the development of reconfigurable software. However, component integration and reconfiguration complexity issues make component-oriented programs difficult to maintain, expand and widely reuse. In this paper we propose a distributed Meta model driven framework that eases software customization and redirects this task away from the software developer to the software user. Through the use of an application generator tool we realize the concept of ‘model once, generate anywhere’.