We are committed to building a suite of products that enable the alignment of IT with strategic business requirements using model automation technologies integrated with project management tools. These products are based on industry standards, such as the OMG’s Meta Object Facility (MOF) and the Unified Modeling Language (UML). The core of our products is the Business Model Automation Engineä (BMAE), which transforms formal business models into software models and generates the implementation of software components.

Model Automation Tools

Our model automation tools allow us to take a very model-driven approach to system architecture and application development. Our Business Model Automation Engineä (BMAE) is a framework for applying architectural solutions to problem domains, and then automating the implementation of the software components and their integration with underlying infrastructures. Our tools are unique because they do not leave a run-time footprint like other vendor’s tools, other than the client’s particular technology infrastructure.

The benefit of the BMAEä is that it ensures compliance with architectural design decisions. It also eliminates the low level mechanical hand coding that is most prone to errors. Coding is concentrated on implementing pure business logic. Perhaps the most significant benefit is that our tools cleanly separate the business solution from implementation technologies. This separation allows our solutions to be resilient to changes in technology in an age where the pace of technology change is frightening.

The BMAEä framework is conceptually easy to understand. It ingests a UML application model, applies various architectural rules to the model (i.e., persistence, transactions, and security), and then generates the implementation code targeted for our client’s specific technology infrastructure(s).

We are currently working on the following architectural framework plug-ins for the BMAEä :

Enteprise Persistence Generator – ePersistenceä

Strategic business applications must be highly integrated and interoperable in order to share quality information and consistent services throughout the enterprise. In today’s e-Business environment, the enterprise information and services often also needs to be made available to customers and business partners external to the enterprise. Enterprise Information Access is the cornerstone of an enterprise architecture that provides the integration and interoperability demanded by today’s e-Business.

ePersistenceä– Component Persistence

M.E.T.A.’s ePersistenceä tool enables the rapid development of Enterprise Information Access through the generation of access service interfaces and their implementations. Further highlights of the tool are:

Based on Open Standards – the ePersistenceä tool relies on CORBA as its integration infrastructure. It generates OMG IDL and is based on the Object Management Architecture (OMA), the CORBA Component Model (CCM), and the Persistence State Service (PSS) specifications. A direct benefit of this reliance on open standards is the ability to drive an Enterprise Information Access solution that is completely language, database, and platform neutral. Component persistence specifications are derived directly from an application’s domain model.

Transparent Component Persistence – the ePersistenceä tool takes an architectural approach to solving the persistence problem domain, rather than simply just providing a point solution. This approach is an integral part of a larger component architecture vision in which component persistence logic is completely separated from business logic. Applications use well-defined persistence interfaces (rather than an opaque SQL transport interface, such as ODBC and JDBC) based on business application domain models. Changes to the physical database schema will not impact business applications.

No Residual Vendor Footprint – the ePersistenceä tool does not leave behind any footprint of its own. Additionally, it significantly reduces an application’s technology footprint. An application does not have to be linked with database technology libraries. The only technology footprint present in the application is the standard CORBA library.

Focus on Analysis & Design – the ePersistenceä tool promotes the design of the enterprise architecture by allowing an organization to focus on the requirements and analysis of the business domain. The burden of development, testing, and integration of Enterprise Information Access is significantly reduced and, to some extent, eliminated. The result is rapid development of durable solutions.

Extensible – the ePersistenceä tool can support any target technology (RDBMS, ODBMS, Mainframe, ERP, etc.) through a plug-in technology integrated into the core generation engine.

Archuation™ Process Software:

Archuation™ is an MDA™ tool that facilitates the specification of analysis models defined using the OMG's Unified Modeling Language (UML™ ) and Object Constraint Language (OCL™ ).  Archuation™ can read UML™ models and then generate detailed design models using model transformations based on UML™ Profiles.  The model transformations are combined with coding templates to produce the code.   The transformations and code templates are completely managed by the software development team and are in no way constrained by the tool.  The generated design and code are fully documented from the model.

Archuation™ streamlines the development process in several ways.  First, it automatically applies software design decisions made by software architects, which greatly reduces errors prone to manual design and coding.  This automation also reduces the need and effort to enforce software architecture standards.  Second, Archuation™ eliminates code that is redundant, rote, and prone to error.  This allows development teams to focus on business logic and business rules -- the code that adds direct value to the business.

In short, Archuation™ addresses the quality software issue while reducing both software system development costs and time to market.

Project Management Tools

We intend to integrate our model automation tools with project management tools geared toward large-scale, distributed, enterprise projects.