Web Application Architecture example

Architecture of AndroMDA Generated Applications

Now that we understand the basic concepts behind modern enterprise applications, let's discuss how AndroMDA implements these concepts. AndroMDA takes as its input a business model specified in the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and generates significant portions of the layers needed to build a Java application. AndroMDA's ability to automatically translate high-level business specifications into production quality code results in significant time savings when implementing Java applications. The diagram below maps various application layers to Java technologies supported by AndroMDA.

• Presentation Layer: AndroMDA currently offers two technology options to build web based presentation layers: Struts and JSF. It accepts UML activity diagrams as input to specify page flows and generates Web components that conform to the Struts or JSF frameworks.
• 
  
• Business Layer: The business layer generated by AndroMDA consists primarily of services that are configured using the Spring Framework. These services are implemented manually in AndroMDA-generated blank methods, where business logic can be defined. These generated services can optionally be front-ended with EJBs, in which case the services must be deployed in an EJB container (e.g.,JBoss). Services can also be exposed as Web Services, providing a platform independent way for clients to access their functionality. AndroMDA can even generate business processes and workflows for the jBPM workflow engine (part of the JBoss product line).
• 
  
• Data Access Layer: AndroMDA leverages the popular object-relational mapping tool called Hibernate to generate the data access layer for applications. AndroMDA does this by generating data access objects (DAOs) for entities defined in the UML model. These data access objects use the Hibernate API to convert database records into objects and vice-versa. AndroMDA also supports EJB3/Seam for data access layer (pre-relase).
• 
  
• Data Stores: Since AndroMDA generated applications use Hibernate to access the data, you can use any of the databases supported by Hibernate.