Variant logic automated update for MDA based enterprise information systems

Abstract

Application customisations can become a very expensive option for EIS application users to achieve the required business functionality they need. When considering the whole of life cost where customisations may need to be re-engineered to suit each EIS upgrade the costs can magnify significantly.Our ongoing development of a temporal meta-data EIS application framework seeks to overcome these issues, through modelling customisations rather than coding, as what we term Variant Logic. Via an automated update process all Variant Logic instances are preserved during meta-data application upgrades. Managing any logic collision detections that may occur is greatly simplified as any potential conflict can be precisely identified, and in advance.The meta-data update process removes the need from vendors to produce version specific update programs, and fully automates the end user’s meta-data EIS application update processes. The use of Variant Logic and collision detection greatly reduces much of the re-compatibility effort for the customisations and ensures their timely availability for inclusion with the meta-data update.