ISML: A language and MDE environment to model and generate web applications with integration of existing components

This paper presents the practical experience and results of two consecutive projects that have achieved significant automation and reuse in the development of software applications in a Colombian company of the software industry. The projects have been conducted in the past three years by a joint university-industry group and have given as main result a modeling environment (MDE), called ISML (Information Systems Modeling Language). The environment allows expressing models of web applications in a textual language that is simpler than frameworks for developing web applications, and then it transforms the models into source code of specific technologies, such as Java EE 6. An important contribution of the ISML environment is that models can represent existing components of the company; these components are automatically integrated to generated source code. All these advantages of the ISML environment have the potential to reduce times and cost to develop software projects.