The early-bird booking period for next month’s openArchitectureWare PowerWorkshop closes on 1st September.

The workshop runs from September 22nd - 24th at St. John’s Innovation Centre, Cambridge, UK and is being run by Karsten Thoms of leading German Model-Driven Software Development consultancy items AG.

The workshop covers:

• the basics of model driven development
• an introduction to the Eclipse Modelling Framework (EMF)
• the openArchitectureWare (oAW) workflow engine
• textual domain-specific languages and Xtext
• code generation from models using Xpand and Xtext
• model validation
• creation and use of generator cartridges
• meta-modelling
• model-to-model transformation
• best practices for Model-Driven Software Development (MDSD)

Book on or before 1st September and save £300 + VAT off the full £1200 +VAT rate. Places are strictly limited and are allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.

I mentioned previously that I was organising a Code Generation stream for the Embedded Systems Conference in Birmingham on 2nd October.

The programme, which will cover a range of topics on model-driven software development approaches, tooling and process issues is now coming together and the provisional schedule looks like this:

One day conference registration is available from £95+VAT as part of an early-bird booking period that runs until 19th September.

Obviously a few details have to be ironed out but I hope that the programme will be of interest to a wide range of people and I will post here when everything has been finalized.

I’ve been asked by the organisers of this year’s Embedded Systems Show (ESS) to put together a conference stream on Code Generation and related tools and technologies.

The plan is to run 6 or so sessions introducing model-driven software development, describing the main approaches such as UML/MDA and DSLs, looking at some of the available tooling e.g. Eclipse Modelling Tools and covering a case study or two from an embedded or real-time system development.

I’ve also proposed that the day is wrapped up with a panel session provocatively titled 10 years from now no-one will write code by hand. Hopefully there won’t be too much bloodshed on the conference room floor…

Keep an eye out here or on the ESS web site for more details as the programme is developed. Although the sessions will have an embedded focus, non-embedded developers should also be able to get a lot out the day.

The dates and venue for next year’s Code Generation 2009 event have now been finalized.

The event will take place at Murray Edwards College (formerly New Hall) in Cambridge, UK from 16th - 18th June 2009.

Conference themes will remain as this year:

• Code Generation !
• Domain-Specific Languages
• Model-Driven Software Development
• Model-Driven Architecture
• Software Factories and Software Product Lines
• Eclipse Modelling Tools
• Generative programming and other similar approaches.

The Call for Speakers will be available in October with a submission deadline in January 2009.

The final programme will be published at the end of February 2009.

Contact us if you’d like to be kept up to date on event news.

This year’s UK Software and Systems Quality Conference will take place in London from September 29th - 30th.

The event is focussed on how testing and quality management can help improve business productivity and I see a number of interesting themes in the programme:

• Increasing penetration of agile development methods - boldly going into organisations where no agile methods have gone before.
• Organisations experimenting with setting up a centralised quality management / testing group in preference to having project-based groups. Sort of a quality centre of excellence.
• A stronger focus on professionalism in testing - (more) emerging standards and certification options.

There is also an extra day of tutorials on October 1st with a heavy focus on testing in an agile setting.

Last years inaugural event drew over 400 participants and the organisers expect similar numbers this time around.

We’ll be on stand 17 of the associated exhibition demonstrating Axivion Bauhaus Suite and pure::variants.

I guess it’s pretty clear how Bauhaus helps improve software quality through its battery of software analysis tools but it’s perhaps less clear how pure::variants can help so I’ll explain.

pure::variants helps organisations who are developing software product lines - families of similar-but-different product variants. Organisations developing software product lines are commonly found in the embedded space but are also present in other sectors.

pure::variants is a whole life cycle tool for managing the variability that is inherent in such product lines. This variability arises for example from the need to deliver different software for different target devices, for different locales or legal frameworks or for different end-user organisations. Even in small product lines this variability can be very hard to manage and so systematically managing your product line with pure::variants will help improve productivity and quality.

pure::variants integrates with requirements management tools and so helps improve quality through reuse of requirements and by providing a significantly stronger variability modelling capability than any requirements management tool leading to more clarity and less rework.

pure::variants integrates with test and quality management tools and so helps improve quality through reuse of tests and higher-level test artefacts. The integration with quality management tools allows you to identify which combination of features is associated with a particular bug and so focus your test effort on only those product variants that have this combination of features.

pure::variants also allows you to reduce the number of code-level variability constructs (such as if-defs). This makes it clearer what your code actually does and so helps improve quality and reduce the potential for error.

If you do come to the conference drop by and say hello and we’d be happy to explain in more detail.