Parallax – An Aspect-Enabled Framework for Plugin-Based MDA Refinements Towards Middleware

MDA has been around for more than three years already. Nevertheless, besides the lack of a standard model transformation language to support the MDA vision, there is even a lack of tool support to implement the platform-specific mappings promoted by the same MDA. For quite some years now, tool vendors offer the possibility to generate code for different programming languages, but the spectrum of tools is very limited when it comes to generating code for different middleware infrastructures. Parallax, based on aspect-oriented support and through a well-defined system of plug-ins, addresses this issue by providing a framework that enables developers to first (re-)configure their designs and enhance them with middleware-specific concerns at different MDA-levels of abstraction, and then adapt the implementation of these concerns to different middleware infrastructures and see how they are actually implemented at the code level. Moreover, developers and middleware vendors can contribute and enrich Parallax by implementing and providing the community with new plug-ins for their favorite middleware infrastructures.