Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Model Search Evaluation

Hello there, reusers. This post is a request for help in a project about a model search engine that I am currently developing at George Mason University, USA. The idea is that current search engines (Google, Google code, Krugle, Koders, etc) can not be easily used to find models in the context of Model-Driven Development, since they do not have some features such as filtering by metamodel and having a proper visual representation. So, a search engine specifically designed for models could lead to a greater reuse of models.

For example, if you are developing a system for the gaming domain, you could use it to find other game models. Another possible scenario is a teacher trying to explain the concepts of use case modeling, and uses the search engine to find examples of use cases models.

We are now planning an experiment to determine if such search engine can really lead to some of the expected benefits, and for that we need... models! If you have access to some models that you can share (any model will work, as long as it is in the XMI format - this includes Rational, ArgoUML, and a number of other tools), please send it to me (dlucredio - gmail). It does not need to be UML, but if you have a different metamodel, I will also need the metamodel as well (xmi or emf-compliant jar file).

Thank you all, and wait for the results of the experiment in this blog!

3 comments:

penyaskito said...

Maybe you want to comment about this in the argouml users mailing lists.

Kudos.

Anonymous said...

Interesting Idea. Drop us a line when you have a prototype up and running. support@koders.com

Can you also correct the link for Koders to point to our website versus google's code search.

Thanks!

Anonymous said...

I have some particular interest in this area, having recently joined Krugle from Borland and earlier, Telelogic. For reference, I was running Tau product management when Telelogic added support for SysML and DoDAF as UML 2.0 profiles. Coincidentally, some of that was done with help from GMU.

You mention the need for visualization (which is natural) but I was also reminded of the Eclipse 3.x work on logical model integration. I wonder if this logical/physical mapping approach might provide an integration point to search tools like Krugle, even without visualization. I last looked at this at Borland when revising the Together/StarTeam integration using the Team API, but it seems like it could apply here, too.

I'd love to chat further about this if you're interested (mgraney - krugle). Thanks!