Success Story: THE IT-ARCHITECTURE PROFESSIONALS Success Story: Siemens RailCom and Model Driven Architecture Siemens builds Product Line with MDA Siemens Transportation mation screens (CIS), closed-circuit TV End Customers Systems (CCTV) surveillance equipment, help- point intercom (HPI) emergency call The main customers of the RailCom Siemens Transportation Systems is a di- stations, supervisory control and data Manager are global and regional mass vision of Siemens AG, the world’s largest acquisition (SCADA), and related facili- transit operators, such as train and sub- manufacturer of electrical and electron- ties. way operators. The organization Siemens ic equipment. Siemens Transportation Transportation Systems Rail Commu- Systems has many years international nication supplies rail communication experience in building large-scale tran- RailCom Manager offers: projects of diverse complexities all over sit systems. the world, including success stories in Berlin, Hanover, the Netherlands, New • Real-time timetable information, con- York, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Malay- tinuously available to passengers RCM – RailCom Manager sia. These projects include passenger in- • Up-to-date information and entertain- formation systems, public address, clock Siemens RailCom Manager communica- ment in stations via electronic media systems, video surveillance, emergency tion management system is a standard call, telephony solutions, communica- • Readily accessible emergency tele- product, which provides access to all tion networks and SCADA – leveraging phones and information terminals information, communication and moni- the full bandwidth of the RailCom Manager toring systems via a single, integrated • Surveillance cameras in stations which functionality. user interface. The product integrates provide active protection of passengers public address (PA), customer infor- and property RCM is a Product Line Solution Siemens RailCom was facing a huge challenge when moving from offering a service towards the development of a standard product. Traditional standard solutions, such as, for example, ERP Sys- tems (Enterprise Resource Planning), offer a fixed set of functionality, which is usually customized through parameters in database tables, configuration files and rules capturing customer specific system behavior. Success Story: RCM Product Line Approach The RCM product line is a set of highly reusable components. For individual projects, these components can be tai- lored and combined with additional components to meet customer specific requirements. The project specific tai- loring of product components can be done on different levels. Model Driven Architecture (MDA) allows for tailoring on different UML model levels, and ef- ficient mapping to a customer specific The RCM product needed to be much Tailorable Standard Solu- implementation, without breaking the more flexible, for a number of reasons: tions with MDA and RCM product approach. Individual com- ArcStyler ponent instances will have a lifetime of • RCM must seamlessly integrate into up to 15 years and MDA helps ensuring the existing, hugely diverse technical ArcStyler was chosen by Siemens be- that product components and tailored environments at different customer customer components will stay in synch sites cause of its excellent support for MDA, as well as it’s high level of openness, over this time, ensuring cost efficient • RCM must be flexible enough to sup- which was a prerequisite for building maintenance of many tailored compo- port a wide variety of different func- a tailorable standard solution. Siemens nent instances. tional requirements RCM makes use of many of ArcStyler’s • RCM must be open to include differ- open framework features. Component Based Devel- ent best-of-breed modules and pack- opment with MDA ages from 3rd parties, depending on In addition, Siemens gained the follow- ing benefits from ArcStyler: the customer’s specific situation The primary principle of RCM’s compo- • Significant increase in development nent development is “Design by Con- Consequently, Siemens RCM needed productivity through high level of au- tract”, i.e. RCM components are loosely an approach which allowed openness tomation coupled, and interact only via well de- and flexibility beyond traditional pack- fined interfaces. No assumption can be age customization approaches. • Efficient management of complex UML models made on the physical location of individ- ual components. MDA supports the defi- • Architectural consistency across all nition of well structured and technology MDA – Model Driven technical and functional tiers of the sys- independent component interfaces. Architecture tem • Efficient and well structured MDA- The Model Driven Architecture® �������� based development process ������������ (MDA®) of the Object Management � � � � Group™ (OMG™) allows for very effi- � � ���� � � � �������������� � � cient mapping between different UML � � Model Driven Offshoring � � � � ������ Component models with different levels of abstrac- � � (MDO) � ������������ � � Definitions � tion. MDA also supports automatic � � �������������� mapping of detailed technical models Siemens decided to conduct the entire ����������� to a concrete implementation, such as application development at an offshore in Java or C#. development center in Budapest. Only ����������������� the business team and a small number of technical key staff is based at the head The figure above shows the MDA-based quarter in Germany. The MDO approach, approach for Component Based Devel- which combines offshore development opment. A key feature of MDA is the MDA and MDA, was chosen to reduce the risks seamless transition of component mod- of offshore development, and ensure els from a very high level of abstraction long-term control over the work results. down to the concrete implementation. Success Story: Component Types Component Tailoring RCM implements the following Compo- nent Types, leveraging MDA for auto- MDA Business Models mated component generation: MDA Architecture Blueprints • Transportation Object Model: repre- sents events and processes in the sys- Rules tem RCM Tailored Standard RCM • Business Components, including rule Component Configuration Component engine, scheduler, message processing and audio processing. • Device Control Components: displays, The benefit of an MDA Architecture Component Tailoring with MDA audio, video surveillance, help points, Blueprint is that it helps ensure archi- stairs and elevators, on-vehicle presen- tectural consistency across all technical Components are explicitly designed for tation, etc. tiers as well as across all components. reuse, and solve project specific busi- ness functionality through tailoring on • Configuration Components, describ- The MDA Architecture Blueprints for different levels: ing the structure and configuration of RCM components support a variety of Configuration and Rules the system technologies, including Java 2, RMI, • • Technical Components, e.g. logging JMS, RTP (audio steaming), HTTP, XML, • Adaptation or exchange of specific and monitoring SOAP, CORBA/IIOP, SSL and O/R Map- components, supported through Model ping (Hibernate). Driven Architecture MDA Architecture Platform-Specific Blueprints The Result Blueprints A key benefit of MDA is that component • Highest possible level of reuse design is done independently of the ArcStyler offers a rich set of MDA car- • Efficient tailoring of existing functionality tridges, which automate the mapping technology used to implement the com- from UML models to a concrete imple- ponent. Different MDA Architecture Blue- • Efficient handling of different trans- mentation, e.g. in Java, J2EE, or .Net/C#. prints can be used to seamlessly map a portation information sources component to specific target platforms. Each cartridge typically supports a spe- Efficient handling of different station This was important for Siemens RCM, be- • cific tier, e.g. GUI development, com- hardware displays, audio systems, video cause different customers require differ- ponent development, persistence, etc. systems, etc ArcStyler also allows for the efficient ent operating environments. Currently, customization of existing cartridges to RCM is using two different Architecture • Flexibility to run on different hardware meet specific customer needs. An MDA Blueprints: one for BEA WebLogic, one platforms, operating systems, and appli- Architecture Blueprint is a project spe- for JBoss. cation servers. cific combination of cartridges, which generates the code needed to imple- B C D ment the project specific architecture. Component AComponent Component Component Presentation Process PAI MDA CARTRIDGES Logic DBMS.