Goals for this course:
RJLRef: $PH/08s522/08s522Goals080123.txt

In this course I hope to convince you that the future of 
programming lies with Model-Driven Architecture (OMG/UML2/MDA) 
and its current and future commercial alternatives.
These models can be developed by anyone who has mastered 
Object-Oriented Analysis and Design fundamentals and is supported 
by tools.

An O-O data model can define database content 
AND runtime control flow behavior for any application, 
and this 'design database' of model diagrams can be stored 
in a version-controlled relational database (RDB). 
From there it can be applied to automatically generate
source code libraries, which assist reduced amounts of lower-level 
user-written source code to execute many (if not all) applications.

To divide and conquer this complex framework we are evolving 
Collaborative Object-Oriented Laboratory (COOL).
This has three major components:  GEN, LCP and BDE.

COOL-GEN: GEN works as a pre-compiler to process models 
for any application's persistent database. GEN translates these 
data model[s] into a source code library (C/C++/Java) to access 
and maintain data for most real applications. Three versions 
of GEN (all written in C) produce C, C++ or Java code, respectively.

COOL-LCP: LCP interprets behavioral models [state and interaction 
diagrams] which define rules for an application's runtime behavior. 
These models are also stored in the version-controlled design database. 
LCP is a run-time interpreter that obeys rules for event-driven 
control flow and executes (efficiently simulates) the application.
The LCP event que and dispatcher can support concurrent threads 
and distributed processes. The LCP ionterpreter is written in C.

COOL-BDE: BDE is a graphic editor for generic block diagrams.
COOL uses BDE to draw block diagrams of class, state and interaction 
types.  GEN and LCP get their inputs from relational database tables, 
and BDE represents these tables in a human-understandable way, 
since  the RDB and graphic representations are two-way convertible.

Converting BDE diagrams to/from GEN and LCP input tabular format
is relatively simple because all three COOL components use a 
relational table format. In fact, GEN is used to generate code 
for both LCP and BDE, and LCP can provide a runtime interpreter
for control flow within BDE, which has a state-model-based design.

Of course, the COOL framework doesn't eliminate programming - 
it just pushes it down to the level of writing smaller individual 
class action methods that are invoked by LCP's event dispatcher.
However BDE's graphic state models permit visualization 
not only of class-level control flow rules, but also of runtime
simulations. A future goal is to animate or visualize object or
instance-level behavior on state diagrams drawn by BDE.

BDE has XWindows and Java versions. Anyone can try out this link:

  www.cs.uml.edu/~lechner/COOL-BDE/bde2java/bde2java04f/bde2java2

whose 'Run Application' button executes a block diagram editor
(15K of Java code, 30 sec download on a cable modem).
It works under MS/IExplorer and Java SDK but not Firefox.

A bde2java User Guide is at 
  www.cs.uml.edu/~lechner/08s522/bde2javaUserGuide080123.{txt,htm}
and a bde Unix User Guide is at 
  www.cs.uml.edu/~lechner/COOL-BDE/BDEUserGuide2005
A future goal is to produce a platform-independent version of BDE
based on the FOX open-source GUI framework.

============================================

Bob Lechner
lechner@cs.uml.edu
www.cs.uml.edu/~lechner
781 449 1497