Speaker

Andrew Watson
OMG

After graduating from the University of Cambridge with first class honours in Computer Science and Engineering, Andrew spent two years at Hewlett-Packard's Bristol Research Centre, working on one of the first commercial X.400 implementations, and subsequently investigating the current state of software engineering practice within the company as a whole. He returned to Cambridge in 1987 to join Harlequin, then a newly-formed start-up with 12 staff, where he was one of the original designers and implementors of LispWorks, the company's ground-breaking Common Lisp programming environment for workstations, and later R&D manager, responsible for the company's extensive involvement in both British and European collaborative projects. (Harlequin has since been split into two companies; Global Graphics and Xanalys.)
He joined the ANSA core team in 1989, working initially on the design of the ANSA Computational Model and DPL, a language realising that model. This evolved into work on type systems for distributed, object-oriented programming which has had a direct influence on the ODP reference model.
When soaring conditions in the Cambridge area are poor, Andrew spends his time being Vice President and Technical Director at OMG, where he has overall responsibility for the technology adoption process, and also chair the Architecture Board, which oversees the technical consistency of OMG's specifications.

Presentation: "OMG's Model Driven Architecture (MDA)"

Wednesday 11:00 - 11:45, Tutorial Room

OMG's mission is to help computer users solve integration problems by creating open, vendor-neutral interoperability specifications, which have in turn been widely implemented over the past ten years. When every subsystem supports standardized interfaces, such as those based on OMG's CORBA middleware specification, the task of creating a multi-vendor solution (as most are) is greatly eased. However, as the scope of IT use has widened, so there's a greater diversity of systems that need integrating, from embedded controllers to mainframes to web browsers. No longer can a single integration technology address all these ever- widening requirements.

In recent years CORBA has been joined by a confusion of integration specifications based on open and not-so-open technologies including HTML, XML, .NET, DCOM and Java. Whilst some are merely unwitting re-inventions of existing middleware (but using the latest trendy technology, of course), others are genuinely useful innovations, and solve our new integration problems. However, faced with multiple middlewares, each usefully filling its own evolutionary niche in the integration habitat, we find the wheel has gone full circle - who integrates the integrators?

This talks presents OMG's Model Driven Architecture (MDA), which addresses this problem by providing a framework for creating interoperabilty specifications using multiple technologies. Modelling tools are used to create technology-neutral designs which are then transformed into specifications that use integration technologies in cooperation. The MDA approach helps ensure that IT systems can survive and adapt to the next fashionable re-implementation of today's technology, as well as incorporating future genuinely useful advances in the art of creating interoperable systems.

OMG's Model Driven Architecture (MDA) - (slides)

Please notice that the slides are password protected. You should have received an e-mail containing the required username and password.