On Friday 19 September, Kevin McGuire (Eclipse UI Architect) talks about development tools and environments, covering the thinking that’s leading to new approaches in Eclipse 4.

On Monday 30 September social complexity expert and Europe’s leading Scrum trainer Joseph Pelrine will talk about effective development teams and how they work inside organisations.

On Monday 6 October Rob James (HSBC) and Eoin Woods (Barclays Global Investors) draw on their extensive experience of systems and technology in large organisations to present a snapshot of enterprise architecture.

On Monday 13 October, Adobe platform evangelist Andrew Shorten talks about new developments in application architecture.

On Monday 20 October IBM Architecture practice lead Nick Ababurko will talk about how he’s tackled some of the biggest and most complex projects that IBM have been involved with.

Full details on the talks and speakers are available here. 

These workshops are designed for developers who want to move from simply modelling software to model-driven software development (MDSD).

During the workshop, the concepts and theories of model-driven software development are explained using the openArchitectureWare open-source MDSD Framework. The workshop is hands-on with a strong focus on acquiring practical experience of the various toolsets used.

The workshop covers:

• the basics of model driven development
• an introduction to the Eclipse Modelling Framework (EMF)
• the openArchitectureWare 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

The next course will be presented in Cambridge from September 22nd-24th by Karsten Thoms from itemis.

The fees for the 3 day course (including training materials, lunch and tea / coffee) are £1200 + VAT but if you book more than 3 weeks ahead of the workshop start date we’ll knock off 25%.

The conference takes place from 5-8 April 2009 at the Robinson Centre, Bedfordshire, England.

Here’s the blurb:

The SPA Conference, now in its 17th year, is the place where leading software development practitioners gather to share their latest thinking.themes are only given as an indication of possible sessions.

You’ll find its interactive sessions, high proportion of attendees who are also presenters, and residential nature make SPA a unique and memorable conference. Many attendees return year after year. You’ll meet expert participants who as as keen to learn and discover as they are to share what they know.

We welcome submissions from everyone - you don’t have to be an expert or an experienced presenter. You’ll be supported by well-established shepherding process which provides assistance and support to all presenters.

Presenters pay a reduced rate for the conference, and this year you might be able to attend for free! We will be awarding a free place to the best proposal from a new presenter. You qualify if you’ve never presented at SPA, even if you’re submitting with a co-presenter who has.

Presenting at SPA is great for your profile within the software development community. We’re looking for session proposals which are interactive and leading edge, possibly even experimental. They can be about technology or teams, practice or process - in fact anything to do with improving software development. They can be as main stream or niche as you like - we select proposals on their merit not on their trendiness. The suggested

The submission deadline is  6pm on Monday 15th September 2008.

I’ve spoken at SPA for the past four years and really enjoy the experience. Unlike many other conferences the program committee and assorted speaking veterans [1] spend lots of time on reviewing each session proposal and providing feedback to session proposers. If you are accepted then you’ll be allocated a shepherd, usually an experienced SPA speaker, to guide you through the process of preparing your session. This provides very valuable support even if you’ve spoken many times before as it helps you tune your session for the typical SPA audience.

I’m planning to volunteer at the conference again so if you do make it to the event come and say hello.

[1] I’ve been part of the group to review session proposals for the past couple of years but wouldn’t yet consider myself a veteran - there are a few people who attend who have been to every single SPA (formerly OT) conference…

Keynotes

• Matching Supply and Demand: Challenges in Model-Based Code Generation for QoS-Constrained Software (Bran Selic) PDF (4.93 Mb)
• The Domain-Specific IDE (Steve Cook) PDF (4.38 Mb), Powerpoint (3.83 Mb)

Other Sessions

• Model-Driven SOA: Synchronize Business Planning with the IT Design Process (Ian Barnard) PDF (2.00 Mb)
• Supporting the Model-driven Development of Component-based Adaptive Systems (Nelly Bencomo) PDF (2.38 Mb)
• Enterprise Level Code Generation (Matthew Fowler) Powerpoint (884 kb)
• Using Eclipse Modeling Tools to develop LEGO Mindstorms Robots (Peter Friese, Frank Zimmermann) PDF (1.85 Mb)
• Evangelizing Code Generation: A Case Study of Incremental Adoption (Brooke Hamilton) PDF (3.00 Mb)
• Strategies for Generating Code from Microsoft DSL Tools and T4 Text Templates (Brooke Hamilton) PDF (224 kb)
• Building industrial sensors with Model-Driven Software Development (Bernhard Merkle) PDF (3.02 Mb)
• MDD: Models, frameworks & code generation: some experiences building business software (Pedro J. Molina) PDF (2.22 Mb)
• Putting It All Together (Michael Osmond) PDF (509 kb)
• A Practical Guide to Code Generation using Model Driven Architecture and Executable UML (Chris Raistrick, Ian Wilkie) PDF (1.71 Mb)
• Using openArchitectureWare for M2M and M2T (Karsten Thoms, Sven Efftinge, Jan Köhnlein) PDF (1.86 Mb)
• Implementation Techniques for Domain-Specific Languages (Markus Völter) PDF (3.14 Mb)
• Building Interpreters with EMF, Xtext and Scala (Markus Völter) PDF (2.15 Mb)

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

Audio-Recorded Sessions
Several conference sessions were audio-recorded. We will release edited copies of these as time (and energy) allows…

Engineers and researchers from Daimler Chrysler AG presented the results of their work on “Functional Variants Handling in Simulink® Models” - work that is partly based on use of the pure::variants software product line management solution.

The presentation (PDF) begins with a rationale for the work - the ever increasing amount of functional variability present in automotive products - so much so that statistically no two Mercedes-C class vehicles produced in any year should be identical.

This variability drives a corresponding need to reuse software across the vehicle product line. To achieve this reuse the engineers argue that a systematic approach is required to variant management.

pure::variants underpins this approach by allowing them to model what the common and variable features of their products are and then using this model to produce variant-specific Simulink® models. (You can find out more about how pure::variants works here.)

In addition to improving reuse of software and models this approach also allows them to improve traceability throughout the life cycle. A valuable benefit in a safety-critical setting such as automotive.

As well as a PDF presentation the presenters also provided an associated whitepaper that describes the work in more detail.

Simulink is a registered trademark of The Mathworks Inc.

I’m running a panel session titled “Product Line Scoping in Practice” and a demonstration session titled “Jump-Starting Product Lines with Clone Detection” - more details to follow.

The conference runs from September 8th-12th; see the full programme.

Danilo is known for being one of the prime movers behind the pure::variants software product line toolset we distribute. He’s a highly-experienced product line consultant so I’m hoping for good things here.

The first postings give basic definitions of Versions and Variants and comment on Markus Voelter’s JAOO video describing variability.

Here’s the blurb for this first talk:

“We made a bet, some decades ago, that the information economy would be based on buying and selling (and hence restricting copying of) information. We were totally, 100 percent wrong, and now the world’s in turmoil because of it. What does a copy-native economy look like? How do everyone from barbers to musicians become richer, more fulfilled and more civilly engaged in a real information society. And what do we do about the fact that a couple of dinosauric entertainment companies are determined to screw it up?”

The event is running at Robinson College, Cambridge from 17:30 and you can sign up here.

Peter Kovari was first off the mark with postings recording his highlights for each conference day. Peter summarised by saying that “it was an excellent conference with a lot of great presentations from the top experts on this field, great discussions during panels, BoFs and Goldfish Bowls. A lot of new ideas, thoughts and questions to take away to consolidate and look for answers until next year’s event.” 

Clemens Reijnen enjoyed the conference and was also taken with the goldfish bowl sessions we ran. He’s also included a few photos and a short video from the conference.

Jan said it was“…probably one of the most inspiring conferences I’ve been to. The unique combination of a beautiful surrounding with highly intellectual people, created a steady flow of ideas.” and the event gave him plenty to think about.

In CG2008 - more than just content one participant noted that one of the big benefits of the event is the chance to meet with many people with similar and different experiences of code generation. In fact that author was one of a handful of people who were still at the event as we packed up and left, maybe they’re still there

Jan Köhnlein had ‘fun’ at the conference mixing with a lot of people with interesting views and news.

Leonardo Gomes provides a nice write-up of the main conference themes and notes “During the quite intensive three days of conference, we had the opportunity to listen, learn, discuss, meet great people and have a lot of fun.“

Finally, MetaCase have also mentioned the event in their July 2008 newsletter noting “[This event] is cementing itself as a key event for thought leaders in the fields of code generation and model-driven development.”

With these and several other participants also commenting on the intensity of the event maybe we’ll have to ease the pace for Code Generation 2009, after all, some of us aren’t getting any younger

Thanks to everyone who shared their experiences and contributed to making it a memorable event.

Update 14th July 2008

Sean Kavanagh has also written about the event. In his posting he highlights the Goldfish Bowl discussion: Modelling Standards: what exists, what’s missing and what failed?  as the most interesting panel session. Sean has a long background in modelling and Code Generation and also makes some interesting observations about the state of executable UML.

A basic problem automotive systems developers are facing is the large number of possible vehicle functions and options due for example to differences in target markets, vehicle type and engine capacity.

This variability can only be handled economically through strategic reuse and this requires a formal model for the variability inherent in the product line.

The article describes an approach to this using the pure::variants specialist solution for managing variability and product lines in conjunction with the widely-used Simulink® toolset.

Here’s the blurb:

A characteristic of today’s motor vehicles is a wide range of variants with slightly different functions. Since this variability has to be reflected in the software development models, it is essential that there are concepts for systematically handling the variability of functional models. Differentiating between the central and model specific variability information allows uniform handling in Simulink and creates an explicit representation of distributed model variability.

I couldn’t have said it better myself…

The original version of the article is in German but an English version can be downloaded from the Software Acumen web site here: Handling functional variants in Simulink® models (PDF 898kb opens in new window)

Simulink is a registered trademark of The Mathworks Inc.