An MDA Approach to Byte Code Level Cross-Compilation

The model driven architecture (MDA) offers a more efficient software engineering process by raising the level of abstraction. Tool support for the MDA is usually limited to generating code from UML diagrams. Most MDA examples in scientific papers are limited to relatively simple use cases that help the understanding of the MDA, but are not suited to demonstrate the powers and flexibility of the MDA. In this paper we show an MDA approach to cross-compile byte code instructions from Microsoft´s Common Language Runtime (CLR) to Sun Microsystem´s Java Virtual Machine (JVM). We introduce an XML-based representation of byte code we call XMLVM. Based on XMLVM we define XSL stylesheet transformations which can map certain features from the CLR to the JVM. Besides providing a specific cross-compilation approach between the byte code of two different virtual machines, we also show how XML technologies can be used within the context of the MDA.