Model-Driven Integration Using Existing Models.

As we engineers develop systems, we build models. These models might include business policy guidelines, database schemata, organization charts, class diagrams, and so on. The models span diverse viewpoints and levels of formality. We seldom revisit these models as the enterprise evolves. Often, the modelers themselves have disappeared, and any knowledge that wasn't captured in the specialized models is inaccessible, forgotten, or written off. Engineers use models even more rarely for later Integration efforts, when the systems have been repeatedly patched or, have become brittle and the models themselves are often inaccessible, if even applicable. However, can models be more than tools discarded along the way? Might they provide the enterprise with enduring value? Engineers can use these models to automate some systems integration steps that occur as systems evolve. If models can enable automated integration methods, the overall integration costs will decrease and modeling efforts' enduring value will return because models will become key to a wider segment of the system's life cycle. Our approach to model-driven integration uses a system's existing model's to characterize how the system's resources might be used to fulfill requirements for new interactions. Links-across-views capture the design intent behind legacy systems. They are combined with requirements for new interactions to produce a joint action model. Developers can use the JAM in downstream, automated integration.