Model-Driven Architecture for Platform and Store Design

The high cost, lengthy time, and lack of synergistic integration activities between aircraft based on the current aircraft/store integration process have driven domestic and foreign militaries to search for a plug-and-play approach for aircraft/store integration. In order to integrate the increasingly complex, software-intensive systems that are currently being designed, streamlined processes must be developed to facilitate their timely adoption. One of the most promising approaches is Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) and Model Driven Architecture (MDA). MDE allows designers to use high-level models to solve particular design problems. With MDE, the systems architecture can be analyzed through many different views and then MDA can be used to transform these high-level models to usable software through an automatic code generation process. The following discusses the current state of aircraft/store integration and how MDA can be used in the integration process to achieve a higher degree of interoperability and move towards true plug-and-play systems.