KerBlue: "Sustainability Driven Architecture"

KerBlue offers a sustainable development architecture which enables one to design a sustainable application, taking early into account that technologies will change. This architecture is split up into 5 parts:

• The Sustainable Virtual Application (SVA)
• The Sustainable Virtual Application Generator (SVAG)
• The Sustainable Virtual Framework (SVF)
• The Sustainable Concrete Application Generator (SCAG)
• The Target Technical Platform (TTP)

KerBlue focuses on the Sustainable Virtual Framework part.

The Sustainable Virtual Application (SVA)

This application is composed of a set of models; these models may include other models. These models, which define the application and the processed data, was designed by computer scientists with help of tools they master (Rational Rose, Visual Paradigm, Entreprise Architect, ...). A suitable tool may be offered to them. Users (functional specialists) use a simpler tool which enables them, initially, to enrich only these models by modifying the user interface. These modifications are enabled with help of a very-simple Web-2.0 tool working through a web navigator.

With a model-driven approach, the SVF embraces in one hand the Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) problematics, and in the other hand, the Model-Driven Web Engineering (MDWE) ones regarding the nature of the target applications. MDWE usually splits the definition of a web application in terms of data (a.k.a. business-model), presentation and navigation models, following thus a separation near from the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. The MDWE community is today leaded by several actors which already defined some meta-models for web-application design, e.g., WebML or UWE.

The Sustainable Virtual Framework (SVF)

This virtual framework, heart of the KerBlue-project innovation, specifies the set of elements an application uses. Of course, It does not define the business functions which change for each application and which need to be fitted according to circumstances. The specified elements match to the elements the developers provide for each application (authentication, visualization, data-manipulation - creation, update, delete, ...). This virtual machine also offers a set of generators enabling one to transform the application models in a set of elements conforming to theses standards and specifications.

The Sustainable Virtual Application Generator (SVAG)

This layer takes place between the SVA and the SVF layers. It defines the generators taking as input the SVA models and giving as outputa set of component models conforming to the SVF specifications (described as meta-models).

The Sustainable Concrete Application Generator (SCAG)

This layer defines the generators required for transforming SVF models . These generators give as output a concrete implementation on the TTP layer. According to the possible matching level, the "human" intervention will be minimal.

The Target Technical Platform (TTP)

This layer is composed of the set of technical frameworks we will consider. The benefits of each framework is strongly linked to communities, tendencies, trends built by the marketing services of the major software-editors. Logically, these technological developments also bring to light new languages and new frameworks. The benefit of decoupling this layer with help of the SCAG is then obvious: moving from one technology to the other requires a simple generation, without needing to reconsider the upside SVA-developed application.