MDA, Meta-Modelling and Model Transformation: Introducing New Technology into the Defence Industry

The paper discusses some practical examples of how Model Driven Architecture (MDA) technology is being applied to some vital issues in the development of avionics systems. A study primarily aimed at addressing the issue of Software Method and Tool obsolescence was conducted by a number of BAE Systems’ sites and York University. It investigated model transformat-ion from legacy Teamwork models to UML models. It then went on to investigate the re-modelling of a component of a legacy avionics system in executable UML, the development of an Ada code generator, and the integration of the resulting auto-generated code into the embedded system without any degradation of functionality and performance. Another Anglo-French study was conducted to investigate software development methods and tools for the challenging Integrated Modular Avionics architecture. Both of these studies contained themes regarding the application of meta-modelling and model transformation.