Based on successful pilots for Credit Suisse and UBS, Montages AG launched its first core service "Productize your Domain Knowhow". A myriad of Domain Models are currently created by leading experts in all kinds of horizontal (methodological, technical, infrastructure, ...) as well as vertical (banking, insurance, health, industry, ...) domains. While everybody agrees on the value of this treasures of formalized experience and science, the costs of usage are still to high. For most people the barrier is still too high, to get from a domain model or standard, be it in Excel, XML Schema or UML2/MOF, and even a simple system letting users create examples, connect their products, or simply understand the underlying intelligence by drawing reports and derived information. And vendors are reluctant to let end users directly profit from domain models independent of their proprietary contribution.

Exponential Costs of Reinventing the Wheel
More and more organizations understand the exponential costs of reinventing the wheel by ignoring existing domain models, both those coming from outside (standards, research) and those coming from inside (strategy papers, concepts behind legacy systems). With our "Productize Domain Knowhow" service, an organization can turn a domain model in a very useful custom tool, without facing the costs of either developing custom software (which is not possible to be financed in 95% of the cases) or bringing modeling and code generation know-how in the own organization (which is an often tried, but seldom directly successful initiative).

Pure Model Driven Business Prototyping
Given a well elaborated domain model, either in XML Schema or UML2/MOF, or even informally described with Powerpoint or Excel, Montages will provide you with an Eclipse RCP or IDE based prototype with the following features in short time:

Integrated XML Schema UML2/MOF Domain Model EMF's MOF<->XSD<->MOF roundtrip capabilities are used to keep the XML Schema and UML2/MOF view of your domain model always in synch, as well as make it possible to evolve your resulting software product by changing either the XML Schema or UML2/MOF view.

Simple XML Schema or XMI for XML Documents Persistence From the domain model we derive a very intuitive (Ecore Free) XML Schema (or alternatively a fully XMI compliant Schema) and an easy to use API, which are both kep in synch with the domain model.

Excel Like Type Save Domain Editor. From the domain model we get a Table editor, very much like Excel, where the rows are like the EMF tree editor, and the columns are a useful layout of your attributes, editable in place. Setting object to object references goes by clicking on other rows. OCL is used to restrict the choices of references usefully (as well as defining constraints, derived attributes, labels, e.t.c.) The layout of columns is done with a metamodel of the editor layout.

Repository Export to UML2 Profile based Format, or legacy XML Schema. If your domain model comes from a standard, often a complex format is predefined to put model-instances in an official repository. To support this, we define with OCL derived attributes, which return the objects representing the format needed by the Repository. In the Table Editor you can see these elements life as derived, OCL defined attributes. OCL constraints can either be put in the Ecore model, or in the EditorConfig (or in the BIRT driver, see below)

DB Persistence and Distributed Objects. We persist with CDO, and then people can edit and discuss the instances in a distributed way. You then have a very powerful model-drien repository and distributed object model. People can do model development in a distributed way, and see updates done by their peers.

BI, creating Office Reports. And finally, using the EMF-to-Birth Driver we generate Word, Excel, and Powerpoint reports from the domain model instances. Unlike other BI tools, we do not go on the DB level for this but we remain on the domain level.

All of these components are developed by using cutting edge Eclipse frameworks EMF, OCL, CDO, and BIRT as they come out of the box.

The final delivery of our service are Java Sources such that an average Java development team can take over the development. Alternatively we can deliver the full model-driven development setup and teach your main software experts in further evolving the product in a pure model-driven way. Last but not least, we can serve as a Software factory, updating the software based on your proposed changes on the model and concept level. These changes are done by the business side only, and can, depending on the background of your experts, be done either in Excel Sheets generated from the domain model, or directly in graphical open source Eclipse modeling tools, or a large choice of proprietary EMF based modeling tools such as IBM Rational RSM.

Montages is aggressively looking for a first client for this service in autumn 2008. Please contact CEO Dr. Philipp W. Kutter for a proposal with respect to your domain.