Several of the Code Generation 2007 participants have written up their experiences of the event…

Steven Kelly’s Code Generation 2007 round up includes a nice photo from the closing session where everyone had one last chance to investigate the questions they had left over from the rest of the conference. I was a little worried about this session when I put the programme together but in the end my fears proved groundless as everyone, including myself, got stuck into writing questions and debating possible answers. I’m just glad that everyone still had the energy to make a success of the session as the conference schedule over the previous two days was quite demanding.

Ian McDowall has also recorded his views on the event and notes that it’s given him renewed impetus to investigate the area. Coverage of Domain-Specific Modelling and Domain-Specific Languages were new areas for him.

Matthew Fowler’s Virtual blog of the conference begins by congratulating us for the timing and content of the event and for keeping any ‘disasters’ out of sight. My own personal record of learning points for the event stretches to over 60 items at present and we’re yet to have our event review meeting so that will probably increase but I do feel that we managed to handle most things well - largely because of Andy Moorley’s extensive experience at administering these types of event.

Matthew notes that IBM were conspicuous by their absence - I did try and get them on board but with no success whatsoever. Maybe next year.

Matthew also observes that most the speakers and participants didn’t focus on the generation aspects of the problem - there were a couple of session proposals in this area but I felt that the programme would have been a little unbalanced by their inclusion as they were quite lengthy sessions. Perhaps we will structure things differently in 2008 to allow for more in-depth sessions.

Finally, not a review but Clemens has noted that Code Generation 2007 was GREAT and has made some pictures of the event available.

As promised previously, more speaker slides from Code Generation 2007 are now available.

• Code Generation from Conceptual User Interface Patterns (Tutorial: Pedro Molina) PDF
• Full generation of a J2EE & .Net enterprise application from a unique UML model, through an iterative method. (Case Study: Imad Bernoussi) PDF
• Mobile Games and Software Product Lines (Case Study: Vander Alves) PDF
• The PISA Project: A MDD case study (Case Study: Pedro Molina) PDF

See the full list of available slides.

Several of the speakers from Code Generation 2007 have been kind enough to make their slides from the event public.

• Automating Application Development for Legacy IT Systems with MDA and SOA (Case Study: Chung-Yeung Pang, Xaver Wiesmann) Powerpoint slides
• Building a flexible software factory using small DSLs and Small Models (Case Study: Jos Warmer) Powerpoint slides or PDF
• Designing a DSL for Information Systems Architecture (Workshop: Eoin Woods, Nick Rozanski) Powerpoint slides
• Evolution of DSLs (Think Tank: Laurence Tratt) PDF
• How to Leverage UML/MDA Investments in the Enterprise? (Tutorial: Franck Barbier) Powerpoint slides
• Life cycle Application Generation (Case Study: Peter Bell) Powerpoint Slides
• Microsoft DSL Tools  - Demonstrations of applications (Case Study: Alan Cameron-Wills) PDF
• openArchitectureWare - (Tutorial: Markus Voelter) Powerpoint Slides
• Putting models (not code) at the heart of the enterprise (Tutorial: Tony Clark) Powerpoint slides
• Service Creation with MetaEdit+ Cambridge (Case Study: Angelo Hulshout) PDF
• Web application generation with Software Product Lines and DSLs (Whitepaper: Peter Bell) Word Document

For slides for the sessions by Steven Kelly and Juha-Pekka Tolvanen - please contact MetaCase directly.

I’ll upload more slides as they become available.

Our paper on Variant Management is now available on-line. Here’s the abstract:

My photos from Code Generation 2007 are now online at flickr.

Well Code Generation 2007 has come and gone and initial feedback shows it was a huge success. Thanks to the sponsors, speakers, participants and helpers for making this possible. It’s hard to believe that we pulled this off in just over 6 months. It’s even harder to believe that we’re planning to do it all again - Code Generation 2008 will take place from June 25th-27th 2008.

More posts to follow once I have a chance to collect my thoughts…

After about a year of planning everything is finally in place for Code Generation 2007.

Just under 100 people will be coming to the event over the course of the next 3 days from places as far afield as USA, Canada, Malaysia, Nigeria and closer to home such as Finland, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, France and of course the UK.

Keep reading for my (hopefully) daily take on the event and wish me luck for a smooth conference…

Today was the final day of the 3rd BCS Configuration Management Group Conference.

My paper on Variant Management, co-written with Danilo Beuche of pure-systems, was accepted a few months ago and today was the point of delivery.

As noted previously there were a few sleepy heads around but I went easy on the audience (at least at the start).

I’ll put the paper up on the Software Acumen web site once I’m back in the office but the basic idea was that there are sub-optimal ways of managing variant development and there are optimal ways of managing variant development.

Sub-optimal methods including Clone-and-own, Independent Component Teams and Platform Versions. These can help in some cases - OK, maybe clone-and-own only ‘helps’ for a very short time - but each has their disadvantanges. One issue of course is that unlike Variant Management they don’t necessarily manage variants across the life cycle but are rather focussed on managing variation in the Configuration Management, Build and Release processes.

When presenting I prefer to have as much audience interaction as possible - it is easier for everyone - so I peppered the talk with questions to the audience and adapted the line of discussion to people’s experiences. We had a good discussion of how variant management helps address the problems of the other named approaches by allowing component dependencies to be formally captured and maintained and so helps developers minimize component interdependencies in a way that isn’t possible when dependencies are not visible or are only managed informally.

Anyway, I think the audience was largely sympathetic and I spoke to most of the people later in the day about the content.

Today was also busier in terms of people coming to the stand so this seemed like a worthwhile event - at least we were noticed and recognised by a few people - however, as always, the proof of the value of an event is in the customer contact that follows and (hopefully) an eventual implementation…

We’re at the 3rd BCS Configuration Management Group conference until later today.

Software Acumen are silver sponsors of the event this year and we’ve been talking about and demonstrating the pure::variants product we distribute on behalf of pure-systems GmBH.

At lunchtime yesterday Danilo Beuche of pure-systems gave a (very) short demo of pure::variants - the variant management tool we distribute in the UK and Ireland. 20 minutes is nowhere near enough time to do justice to the tool but I feel he did a good job of getting the essence of that it does across.

During the day we had a number of people come to the stand to talk about what we were up to and the nice thing was that some of them even have a variant management problem!

After the conference sessions Serena put on a free bar and this was enjoyed by all. Then the conference dinner took place. For once the vegetarian food was pretty good - I have had bad experiences at these things in the past. The company was also excellent.

After dinner we were ‘ambushed’ by Artists Incognito - in this case a trio of singers disguised as waitresses performed a medley of opera and ‘easy-listening’ songs as we finished our coffees.

Later it was announced that there was still cash ‘behind the bar’ and there was a general exodus to make use of this generous facility. I retired ‘relatively’ early but a few people were still going strong at 04:00 I’m told, consequently there were a few sleepy heads this morning. Ideal fodder for my talk on Variant Management…

I arrived at the British Computer Society Configuration Management Group Conference earlier today. The conference is being held near Oxford this year at the rather plush Oxford Belfry hotel.

Danilo Beuche of pure-systems had already got here so we proceeded to set up the Software Acumen stand once I’d settled in.

As you’ll see some of the stand furniture we’ve been provided with is a little - let’s say - sturdy. So even though we have a fairly big stand space there’s not much room for us to move around. (Photo to follow)

After this we mingled. This involved some finger food, a number of drinks and a lot of chat. Later I caught up with Robert Cowham, CMSG President, who’s been organising the event. (Robert will be our SPA Cambridge speaker next month.) He’s just back from a conference in Las Vegas and seemed surprisingly lively given his probably jet-lag. Perhaps it’s all the adrenalin of running your own conference that’s keeping him going…

Tomorrow we’ll have a tool demo of pure::variants by Danilo. Wednesday I’ll give my talk on variant management. In between we’ll aim to have as many visitors as possible to our stand - provided they can see our Lilliputian figures among the giant stand furniture…