Towards automatic code generation for eai solutions using dsl tools

Towards Automatic Code Generation for EAI Solutions using DSL Tools
Hassan A. Sleiman1 , Abdul W. Sult´ n2 , Rafael Z. Frantz3 , Rafael Corchuelo1 a
Universidad de Sevilla, ETSI Inform´ tica a Avda. Reina Mercedes, s/n. Sevilla 41012 hassansleiman@us.es, corchu@us.es 2 Sytia Inform´ tica S.L. a Avda San Sebasti´ n, no 10, Local 1, Entreplanta. Huelva 21004 a awsultan@sytiainformatica.esUniversidade Regional do Noroeste do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul (Uniju´) ı Departamento de Tecnologia, S˜ o Francisco, 501. Iju´ 98700-000 RS Brasil a ı rzfrantz@unijui.edu.br
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Abstract. Current companies count on heterogeneous information technology applications to perform their activities. More often than not, they need to be integrated so that the data they manage is kept in sync or toimplement new functionality. According to a recent report by IBM, companies spend from $5 to $20 on integration per dollar spent on developing new functionality. This ratio argues for engineering solutions. The Model-Driven Architecture initiative promotes the development of software systems at different levels of abstraction, and Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) play a prominent role to reducedevelopment costs. By means of an appropriate DSL, software engineers can design a software system that can later be deployed to a variety of specific platforms using automatic transformations. Our proposal to reduce integration costs is a DSL called Guaran´ and a software tool to design and automatically deploy a integration solutions. Compared to the Enterprise Application Integration UML-profiles, DSLsare more suitable to address problems in a particular domain and are a better approach towards MDA. Keywords: Enterprise Application Integration, Domain Specific Language.

1 Introduction
We define an integration solution as a piece of software that co-ordinates a number of applications exogenously. An integration solution may focus on: Enterprise Application Integration (EAI); Business toBusiness Integration (B2BI); Enterprise Information Integration (EII); Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) and Mashup. Our research focuses on EAI. Enterprise Application Integration always happens inside the same company, in its own software ecosystem, and the goal is to keep applications synchronized or to create new functionalities on the top of them. Furthermore, when considering Business to BusinessIntegration, the solution necessarily involves applications that belong to different companies, so different software ecosystems must be considered. This type of solution has the same aim of EAI, but other aspects when building the integration solution must be considered, e.g. authentication, external network communication failures, service availability, confidentiality, non repudiation oraccountability must be taken into account. In addition, standards like Open Buying on the Internet (OBI), Electronic Document Interchange
Partially funded by the Spanish National R&D&I Plan under grant TIN2007-64119, and the Andalusian Local Government under grants P07-TIC-02602, and P08-TIC-4100. The work by R.Z. Frantz was also funded by the Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst e.V. (EED).

(EDI) andCommerce XML (cXML) are usually adopted for the communication amongst companies. Also, it is very important to point here that those pieces of the integration solution deployed inside a software ecosystem (or in case we deploy it as a whole, so the whole solution) will have unlimited access to the application’s layers that are part of the same ecosystem; to communicate with external applicationsthat take part of the integration solution, but belong to other companies’ software ecosystems, it must be done only by means of the exposed public interfaces of those external applications. According to a recent report, for each dollar spent on developing an application, companies usually spend from 5 to 20 dollars to integrate it [11]. This claims for solutions that can contribute to reduce this...