Evaluation of software development through an MDA tool: a case study

Model Driven Architecture (MDA) was born as a standard of Model Driven Development (MDD) to increment the productivity in the software industry. Actually, there exist different models based tools to get an acceptable degree of automation in the applications generation. Many of those tools allow users to build software with high productivity in their respective domains. According their authors, the very challenge of MDA approach and tools is to put emphasis in a satisfactory degree of productivity and, at the same time, increasing others important software qualities such as portability, interoperability, reusability and maintainability. This paper intends to verify the effectiveness of such benefits analyzing the development of a real application using a MDA tool compared with a traditional approach. For analysis purpose, a series of metrics that can help to evaluate the different aspects related to the benefits of MDA was adopted.