Using model transformation and architectural frameworks to support the software development process: The FIDJI approach

Framework-based development is a well-known software engineering practice which encourages reuse and thus reduces development costs. To improve maintainability and reuse, frameworks need to be modeled quite abstractly and provide specialization mechanisms to refine these models into concrete implementation. Hence they are candidates to address Model Driven Engineering (MDE) and Model Driven Architecture (MDA) challenges. Currently, few development methodologies for MDE integrate such frameworks in their processes. In this paper, we present a development approach called FIDJI, which bases its process on architectural framework specialization using model transformation and its associated CASE tool support.