MDA Explained: The Model Driven Architecture--Practice and Promise
by
Anneke Kleppe, Jos Warmer, Wim Bast
Addison-Wesley Professional
1 edition
May 2003
192 pages
Reviewed by Thomas Paul, October 2003
(7 of 10)
If you are interested in Model Driven Architecture (MDA) but you don't have a clear grasp of what it is or where the designers of MDA see it heading then you might want to pick up this brief, well-written description written by three authors who are well acquainted with MDA.
MDA is the concept of using models developed using a modeling language (UML) to generate real applications. This book can be seen as a high level overview of MDA and at 150 pages it is a fairly easy and quick read. The authors show both what is available today (not too much) and what might be available in the future (perhaps all applications will be generated from models). The authors do try to make the book practical by showing how you can use modeling tools to at least build skeletons of code that can be the start of code development. MDA brings a new set of acronyms but this book explains each of them without too much pain.
So how much of what is discussed here is needed by a typical developer or designer? Probably not too much. But if you want to keep your eye on the future of IT then this book is well worth the read. Perhaps one day writing code will be thought of the same way we think of writing machine language. When that happens you will be able to say you knew it was coming.
(7 of 10)
