Week 16/17 of 2009

Back to work after Easter. I hadn't planned on having a long Easter break. However, I started reading the novel Guilty Pleasures, the first in the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series by Laurell K. Hamilton. I then went on to read the next 15 novels in the series back to back!! I'm not exactly happy with the direction the series is now heading in, i.e. more and more sex while less and less plot. However, you can't help getting attached to most of the characters in the series. Anyway, all of that reading made a good diversion from OOA modelling and Java coding.

Prior to the Easter diversion, I continued reworking and finishing various bits of OOA Tool code associated with Attributes and Data Types. I rewrote a number of algorithms including those for Mapping Complete, Mapping Compatible and Data Type Acceptable. I added a Manual Constrained attribute to Referential Attribute Mapping and rewrote the Loop Constrained and Constrained algorithms. Most of these algorithms will be published as Action Language code within the OOA of OOA once I have finished the simulator allowing the Action Language code versions of the algorithms to be tested.

While coding OOA Tool, I spend a significant amount of time coding model element listeners since most model elements within the OOA of OOA have derived attributes which depend on many other model elements. OOA Tool automatically refreshes itself when any model elements change rather than relying on manual refreshes. This listener logic which can be very complex, needs to be completely automated in the Java software architecture, i.e. the model compiler. This will require automatic analysis of the dependencies within attribute calculation code. I am currently hopeful that this can be done efficiently without the need for design colouring. I eventually hope to replace the OOA of OOA model element Java classes in OOA Tool with classes generated directly from the OOA of OOA metamodel.

I also spent some time searching the web for any other projects, forums or blogs relevant to Shlaer-Mellor and/or Executable UML. I didn't find any ongoing projects in the public domain. The only active forum seems to be The Model Driven Software Network. I'm not a member of the OMG and so can't report on any activity there, other than to say, not much is happening in the public areas. I haven't found any other bloggers with an active interest in Shlaer-Mellor and/or Executable UML. It is all very disappointing.