What is Mondop?

As mentioned in my previous post, i am currently working on a Model Driven Development project called Mondop. At the moment this project is still in a very pre mature stage of development so it’s not available yet to the public. So what will Mondop be when it’s released?

Mondop will be a Model Driven Development Framework / Environment. The first version that will be released is a command-line tool that can be used to generate C# / .Net code from a model defined in XML. After generation the code can be compiled , completed and deployed with Visual Studio.

Why code generation?

In my opinion it’s quite difficult to catch all desired functionality in a model all the time. Besides that often a project requires integration with 3rd parties that are not supported by the MDD environments that deploy the applications directly. Code generation allows the customer to add the functionality that is too difficult to model.
Code generation also makes it possible to let the customers choose what the target platform of the project will be.

Why the name Mondop?

A Mondop is a building within a Thai temple complex in which Manuscripts, Scrolls, etc are stored. So in short a Mondop can be  seen as a building where knowledge is store. This is like Model Driven Development where the knowledge is stored in a model. And the URL www.mondop.com was still available.

The future of Mondop?

At its initial release Mondop will be far from complete. To be successful in the future it will require a decent IDE, many code generators, deployment options, etc. and last but not least a broad acceptance and users. After its initial release users will be able to give feedback.

Welcome to my blog

Welcome reader.

In this first post I’ll write about my intentions with this blog. All subjects i will write about will be my personal interests. This interests are Model Driven Development, Thai Food and Software Development.

Let’s start with Model Driven Development and Software Development. Because I’ve been working as a Software Developer / Architect since December 1997, software development is a great part of my life. The interest for Model Driven Development has started to grow about 4 years ago.

The reason my interest in Model Driven Development started to grow is because I was getting bored with Software Development. In my carrier I’ve been working on business applications most of the time which means it’s mainly reading data, processing data and writing data. To eliminate this unchallenging and repeating work I have been looking for other ways to develop software.

Many people start with ORM-frameworks to eliminate some of the repeating work. My opinion is that ORM-frameworks are only a small part of the solution. Another problem that I want to overcome with model driven development is that often software development projects are delayed and over budget.

My solution is an open source Model Driven Development called Mondop which I’m currently developing. Because it’s in a very early stage of development, the source is not available yet. In my next post I’ll explain what Mondop will be and how I’ll try to improve the software development process.