Avaliação da aplicabilidade do Model Driven Architecture à manutenção de versões personalizadas de sistemas ERP / Assessment of the applicability of Model Driven Architeture to the maintenance of customizad versions of ERP systems

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2008

RESUMO

ERP systems (Enterprise Resource Planning) have been widely used by companies from many sectors. Although the ERPs are commercialized in the form of information systems ready to be used, companies using ERP have peculiarities that generally represent their competitive differential and they are not fully met by these systems. Changing these systems means incurring high costs and risks of generating failures. Several alternatives in process engineering, systems architecture and in criteria for selecting ERP products are being proposed by the scientific community in order to work around these difficulties. This work discusses the difficulty in maintaining customized versions of ERP systems, presenting the result of an experiment that applies the concepts of automated generation of programs from MDA (Model Driven Architecture). The objective of this experiment is to assess the efficiency of versions management from the software models, in comparison with the commonly used approach of managing systems versions from source codes. To carry out the experiment, a method to apply MDA concepts to the development process, customization and maintenance of versions of ERP systems was developed. During the experiment four versions of the same software, which implements one functionality of an ERP system, were generated: one basic version of the software to be customized; one customization of the first version; one corrective maintenance also of the first version, and an automated merge of the second and the third versions. For the evaluation of the experiment, the following items were rated: total number of program lines; the number of lines modified by automated means, and the number of lines manually changed in each one of the four phases of the experiment. The ensuing results demonstrated a significant reduction in the need of manual intervention in the programs for the update of the customized version. However, the several difficulties encountered while trying to model the business rules have led to the conclusion that MDA tools, in their current phase, are not adequate to their full application in systems with the complexity of ERPs. commonly used approach of managing systems versions from source codes. To carry out the experiment, a method to apply MDA concepts to the development process, customization and maintenance of versions of ERP systems was developed. During the experiment four versions of the same software, which implements one functionality of an ERP system, were generated: one basic version of the software to be customized; one customization of the first version; one corrective maintenance also of the first version, and an automated merge of the second and the third versions. For the evaluation of the experiment, the following items were rated: total number of program lines; the number of lines modified by automated means, and the number of lines manually changed in each one of the four phases of the experiment. The ensuing results demonstrated a significant reduction in the need of manual intervention in the programs for the update of the customized version. However, the several difficulties encountered while trying to model the business rules have led to the conclusion that MDA tools, in their current phase, are not adequate to their full application in systems with the complexity of ERPs.

ASSUNTO(S)

engenharia de software model driven architecture enterprise resource planning meta object facility mda personalização de software xml model interchange model driven architecture enterprise resource planning erp meta object facility software customization xml model interchange engenharias

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