Improving the adaptation of web applications to different versions of software with MDA

Abstract

The Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) has been proposed as a way of separating the details of an implementation platform from the problem domain. This paper shows that this approach is also good for the adaptation of software to the different versions of the same platform. As an example, Spring Web Flow (SWF), a framework that allows the definition and representation of user interface flows in web applications, has been chosen. After six months of evolution, the web flows de¯ned with SWF 1.0 RC1 were not compatible with SWF 1.0. The paper analyzes the changes introduced by the new release, and it proposes an MDA-based approach to soften the impact of these changes.