Model-Driven Open Source Software Development - The Open Models Approach

Model-driven development (MDD) aims to increase productivity in software development and manage the complexity of software by utilizing modelling to shift from programming in solution-space to modelling in problem-space. Another approach to increase productivity and experience significant cost savings is to utilize open source (OS) components in software development. This paper presents the state of the art of how to combine MDD methods with OS software development. The approach is called open models software development which is expected to combine the benefits of both worlds. The fundamental idea of open models development is to apply community-driven collaborative MDD. In this paper, open models development is exemplified by constructing resource availability service (RAS). RAS is a web service for providing availability information about resources such as services, content, users and terminals. This paper shows that Open Models development is feasible from technical point of view although there are still great challenges in tooling. In addition, more empirical research is needed in studying attractiveness of open models.