May 2005 Cutter Benchmark Review: MDA in the Balance

by John H. Parodi

Model Driven Architecture (MDA) and its first cousin Model Driven Development continue to make news in the industry. People now use MDA in a variety of ways. At one end of the real-world usage spectrum, we see instances of the complete generation of application code from UML models for embedded systems; at the other, companies are creating enterprise computation-independent models (CIMs) to provide visibility into business processes. The latter group is realizing significant benefits -- sometimes even before software development begins -- thanks to a better understanding of the business itself.