Models and Modeling were on display everywhere at the latest Microsoft Professional Developer's conference. In fact, my guess is that the modeling lifestyle is here to stay. Before you embark on your own modeling career, an Oslo modeling primer might be helpful.
In my prior article, I explained how models are stored in the Repository, but glazed over many of the modeling details. In this article, I'm going use tools from the Oslo CTP SDK to explore model building.
Before exploring modeling, I want to explain why building models are important.
Value in Modeling
First, model-driven development is not new. If you've done HTML development, you've done model-driven development.
As you may have observed, half of the value in modeling is that it creates a new level of abstraction. Higher levels of abstraction mean less code does more. Using the HTML example, HTML user interface functionality requires less code than equivalent functionality implemented in assembly language.
Moreover, in model-driven development, the application consists of data and a runtime, and that's it. Essentially, the model is the application. Assuming the runtime has all the building blocks, there are no assemblies to compile. The application becomes a pile of data. Changing the data changes the application. So, applications can be more dynamic and tools to generate the code can have greater variability. Typically, a small amount of performance is sacrificed for flexibility. In the HTML example, the user interface changes when the HTML changes and there is a tremendous variety of HTML development tools for various development roles, skill levels, and purposes.
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