From Requirements to Code - A Full Model-Driven Development Perspective

Models play a paramount role in model-driven development (MDD): several modelling layers allow defining views of the system under construction at different abstraction levels, and model transformations facilitate the transition from one layer to the other. However, how to effectively integrate requirements engineering within model-driven development is still an open research challenge. This paper shows a full MDD approach that covers from requirements engineering to automatic software code generation. This has been achieved by the integration of two methods: Communication Analysis (a communication-oriented requirements engineering method [1]) and the OO Method (a model-driven object-oriented software development method [2]). For this purpose, we have proposed a systematic technique for deriving conceptual models from from business process and requirements models; it allows deriving class diagrams, state-transition diagrams and specifications of class service behaviour. The approach has been evaluated by means of an ontological evaluation, lab demos and controlled experiments; we are currently planning apply it under conditions of practice in an action research endeavour.