OMG endorses model driven architecture.

At February's Technical Meeting in Iryine, California, USA, the Object Management Group's member representatives voted to endorse the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) as the group's architectural direction, expanding the scope of the standards produced by the international software consortium.

In response to the growing and ever present challenge of enterprise interoperability, the/VIDA offers a full-lifecycle approach to solving the problems of developing, deploying, and integrating existing distributed systems with emerging technology, assembling virtual enterprises that span multiple companies, and implementing business intelligence solutions and enterprise information portals in a multi-vendor environment.

MDA specifications are based on a platform-independent model of an application's business functions. Implementations of this core model on different platforms intemperate easily, enabling the modern enterprise to integrate its many departments and diverse functions across platform boundaries. The architecture extends software ROI by facilitating portability of applications and facilities not only among existing platforms, but also to new platforms as they emerge. OMG member companies in industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, and others already regard MDA as an ideal architecture for the definition of domain standards: its platform--independence allows each enterprise to adopt the standard on its established middleware platform without sacrificing interoperability, while the stability of the core model ensures that standards remain valid even as new platforms emerge.

MDA builds upon OMG's established modelling standards: the Unified Modelling Language (UML); Meta-Object Facility (MOF); XMI Metadata Interchange (XMI), and Common Warehouse Meta-model (CWM). It also beverages OMG's established and widely deployed CORBA platform, its support for enterprise services such as security and transactions, and its many industry-specific standards. Platform--independent application descriptions built using OMG modelling standards can already be realised on any major open or proprietary platform including CORBA, Java/EJB, NET, XML/SOAP, and Web-based middleware. MDA builds on this capability, and all of these platforms are likely target platforms for the MDA. Model Driven Architecture promises:

* Rapid, natural development of cross-platform interoperability solutions

* Ease of portability to other middleware platforms

* Industry standard facilities available on every domain's preferred platform

* Improved productivity when using multiple middleware platforms

Benefits include:

* Reduced cost throughout the application life-cycle

* Reduced development time for new applications

* Improved application quality

* Increased return on technology investments

* Rapid inclusion of emerging technology into existing systems

MDA brings the benefits of OMG's standardisation activities to new middleware platforms, and has generated much discussion and excitement across the software industry. To see quotes from a wide spectrum of IT suppliers and users, and more information about the MDA, please visit

www.omg.org/mda.