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The Mda Journal: Model Driven Architecture Straight From The Masters

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Dave Frankel is a consultant and has played a major role in the development of the Object Management Group's standards. He has served for many years on the OMG's Architecture Board, and recently, he has been especially active in helping create the framework for the OMG's Model Driven Architecture (MDA) standard. In 2003 Frankel authored the widely respected introduction to MDA, Model Driven Architecture: Applying MDA to Enterprise Computing. (Wiley, 2003).

In September of 2003, Dave started editing a column for BPTrends (www.bptrends.com) called MDA Journal. Each month he either wrote a column or edited someone else's article on some aspect of MDA. Column hardly describes the articles, since many ran to 15 pages and explored specific aspects of MDA in considerable depth. The MDA Journal rapidly evolved into one of the most popular monthly publications on BPTrends, and was the host of several ground-breaking statements on MDA, including the first official statement by Microsoft's Steve Cook on their position on MDA and Domain Specific Languages (they prefer the latter), and IBM's MDA Manifesto by Grady Booch, Alan Brown, Sridhar Iyengar, James Rubaugh and Bran Selic which defined how MDA was central to IBM's evolving work in a variety of different areas.

This month Dave S. Frankel and John Parodi have published a new book: The MDA Journal: Straight from the Masters (Meghan-Kiffer Press, 2004). In essence, this book pulls together the first year's MDA columns and presents them in a convenient package.

The table of contents gives you the best idea of the scope of this book:

1.Software Industrialization and the New IT: A Perspective on MDA by David S. Frankel
2.MDA and the Object Technology Barrier by David S. Frankel
3.Transitioning to MDA by Michael Guttman
4.MDA, SOA, and Technology Convergance by Michael Rosen
5.Domain-Specific Modeling and Model Driven Archiecture by Steve Cook
6.Microsoft Should Note Compete With MDA by Michael Guttman
7.Microsoft's Approach To Modeling Is Customer-Driven by Steve Cook
8.MDA and Microsoft by Michael Guttman
9.The MDA Marketing Message and the MDA Reality by David S Frankel
10.Model-Driven Software Development by Jorn Bettin
11.An MDA Manifesto by Grady Booch, Alan Brown, Sridhar Iyengar, James Rumbaugh, and Bran Seslic
12.Agile MDA by Stephen J. Mellor
13.A Model-Driven Semantic Web by David S. Frankel, Partick Hayes, Elisa F. Kendall, and Deborah L. McGuinness
14.Enterprise MDA or How Enterprise Systems Will Be Built by Oliver Sims

If you don't know anything about MDA, this probably isn't the best place to start. If you want a good introduction to the basics, I recommend Dave's earlier book on MDA. For most readers, who have the basics, but are concerned about how MDA is likely to evolve, where it will be best applied, and what its limitations will be, this is the book to get. The authors include some of the best known enterprise architects and methodologists in the world - they really are masters - and they focus on exactly the questions that you are probably thinking about as you consider how your organization might use MDA.

This is a major contribution to everyone's understanding of the issues involved in MDA. It's like getting a seat at an advanced seminar and hearing what the best and brightest really think about MDA.

Must read for anyone interested in the latest thinking in system architecture.