The Metamorphosis of Macro Modeling

It's been a hectic week, but like thunder storms, such turmoil passes quickly. When the sun comes out again afterward, it's an especially beautiful thing.


As part of my partnership with itemis, I needed to set up my own little contracting company to benefit from all the tax advantages of self-employment. Well, it's finally done: Macro Modeling is born, registered, and open for business. I knew you'd be blown away!


I'm preparing for my trip to MDSD 2008 in Elmshorn next month where I'll be talking about the unbearable stupidity of modeling as well as presenting an introductory workshop about EMF. I hope to see some of you there. It will also be my first opportunity to visit the itemis folks at their headquarters too, so I'm doubly excited by the juxtaposition of two cool things!


As Kenn has already pointed out, we now have irrefutable proof that, despite it's apparent popularity at Eclipse, modeling is definitely unbearably stupid: Microsoft thinks it's a good thing and has joined the OMG. Clearly it is the beginning of the end! Although you have to ask yourself, why go micro when you can go macro? After all, just try to get Microsoft to fix a bug for you in next week's build. Good luck to you!


In an even more surprising turn of events, the very next day Richard Soley offers me permanent guest membership status at the OMG; he'd like me to give my "stupid modeling" presentation. Talk about lowering your standards, and that for a standards organization! Could the Microsoft thing just be a coincidence you think? I did notice the air space above my house filling up.


And then I noticed that someone had been taking satellite photos of my yard. Okay, it was just Google, but still! I should be the only one capturing images of my yard.


In case you haven't noticed, modeling is my passion. I like to help other people be successful with modeling, so it's personally gratifying that Skyway Software has appointed me to their Board of Advisors. Like itemis, they're an agile company that applies all the excellent principles of model driven software development as part of their core business. Skyway's business focuses on easing the development of applications in the Java EE space and they're building on Eclipse technology as their foundation. The grass grows greener on Eclipse's fertile ground.


I think these smaller more agile company's are better able to take quick advantage of technical innovation and to drive it forward. When you really think about it, Microsoft seems to be more of a Johny-come-lately in the modeling space. In this fast paced world, if you snooze, you lose. The sun shines brightest on the most agile.


Speaking of Java EE, I wonder how many people would be interested in having generated models, or even dynamic ones for that matter, that support java.io.Serializable? Have a look at 245014 if you're interested; it's pretty much working already.