Re: Ada95 and UML

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

"Joe Simon" <jb.simon@lmco.com> writes:

> we are currently working on defining standards for doing OO
> development using UML with Ada 95 as the target implementation
> language. We are looking at the broad scope and we will then
> concentrate on real-time embedded and safettyy critical projects
> (i.e. are there any UML type constructs that we want to avoid for RT
> - Safety Critical).
> 
> I am attempting to acertain what the implications are in using UML
> with Ada95 (The UML development tool we are using as of now is
> Telelogic Tau, it generates each object as a separate package with
> only one type, making it difficult to use Ada the way we are used
> to).

You may be interested in an open-source framework code generator
backend (at the moment, Rational Rose is the only supported front end)
that I'm working on at http://www.pushface.org/coldframe/.

One point that concerns me about closed generators is that you only
get configurability along the axes that the vendor has thought
of. Seems to me you need a pretty fully-fledged programming
environment, in general. On the other hand, you might not want your
software architects having to learn XSLT ..

I certainly believe that you must constrain the UML subset you're
going to use. If for no other reason than that you need to define the
translation rules, and that means you have to have a precise
understanding of the semantics of the model. At the recent Ada UK
technology update day, a speaker made the point that if neither system
designers nor implementers understand what a statechart construct is
supposed to mean it's unlikely that the implementation will match the
intent ..