OptimalJ 2.2 bridges MDA gap

A gap in the emerging model driven architecture (MDA) standard will be closed in Compuware's upcoming OptimalJ 2.2 release, due out in January.

The Java development tool automates the transformation between the first two of the three MDA development stages.

It turns the platform independent model (PIM) into a platform specific model (PSM). Effectively it takes a business model and turns it into a specific software system.

"MDA is still a little vague," said Wim Bast, OptimalJ lead architect. "There are some standards but it is far from complete."

MDA helps build systems more quickly because it helps generate specifications and code faster than doing it manually.

As well as PIM to PSM transformation, OptimalJ generates code that should be error-free, which accounts for around 60 per cent of a system.

Bola Rotibi, lead analyst at Ovum, said: "It's good that companies are bridging the world of model-to-code generation. The danger would be if everyone went off in their own little world. Someone had to come up with the translation specification to abstract from PIM to PSM."

There were other proposals, Rotibi added, but OptimalJ and Interactive Objects' ArcStyler were presently the most advanced MDA development tools.

Other v2.2 improvements include support for enterprise Java beans (EJB) 2.0 (previously 1.1); an environment-independent EJB database query language (like SQL); and navigation and usability aids using wizards.

A plugin for Borland's JBuilder integrated development environment with IBM WebSphere application development is about two to three months away.