Abstract

The VIDE project aims at a visual, Unified Modeling Language (UML) compliant action language, the VIDE language, suited to business applications. This language aims to embed itself in the Model Driven Architecture of the OMG and to be accompanied with a powerful toolset. VIDE is intended to support a business oriented computation independent layer, aspect-oriented facilities, and means for quality assurance. This first deliverable of VIDE describes the state of the art in all relevant areas for the planned research. It evaluates and selects existing results of state-of-the-art to be (re-)used during further execution of the project. State-of-the-art artefacts which are investigated comprise academic research, standards, and tools. We describe typical user groups, application scenarios, and use cases, and consider especially small and medium-sized enterprises. The state-of-the-art in other core academic research areas, such as metamodelling, visualisation in modelling, aspect oriented programming, quality assurance, and precise means for describing language semantics, is investigated. A further focus of the report is the evaluation of the technological basis of VIDE, which is aimed to be based on standards. We thus evaluate the behavioural part of the UML standard, other (de-facto) standards in model-driven software development, such as for metamodelling, model transformations, and querying models. We also give an overview on tools available for model driven software development. As a result of the evaluation and selection in earlier chapters, we then draw conclusions on the architecture of the VIDE tool.