Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) is a broad church covering several approaches to model-driven development. People often think of models as blueprints that are filled in with code. Model-driven development automates the transformations among these several models. That is, MDA is commonly viewed as supporting "heavyweight," process-heavy modeling techniques.

Whatever happened to all the arguments about component standards? A few years ago, it was popular to talk of DCOM/.NET and EJB/J2EE and compare their relative chances of success. Some comparisons would even include the Object Management Group's (OMG) CORBA Component standard.

Here's another interesting finding based on the results of a Cutter survey conducted last September that asked 127 end-user organizations of various sizes located worldwide questions designed to measure the adoption and use of enterprise information portals (EIPs) in conjunction with other information technologies and business strategies.