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September 20, 1999

Partnerships Boost Modeling Development

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Recent shifts in development philosophy are pushing companies from a two-tier, client-server model to a multitier model utilizing Web or application servers between clients and back-end systems. Business rules, the decisions written into applications to run operations, are moving to the middle. Critical software code running in the middle tier cuts development time since software changes can be made in one place, rather than on both the client and the server.

Best practices for software development provide an application architecture and better methods for creating complex software systems. Following best practices forces development groups to "do the right thing," especially when these practices are built into the model used. Building better design and teamwork habits directly into the modeling software lowers the chance that projects will spiral out of control. Keeping development goals aligned within the modeling software visually shows management where the team is at any time.

One vendor well aware of the need for modeling is Rational Software Corp., the leading vendor in the modeling market. Three of Rational's principals developed the UML standard and turned it over to the OMG. The company provides a range of development tools for large projects, including the Rational Rose modeling tool. The same group at Rational that designed UML has also defined the Rational Unified Process, a searchable knowledge base that runs on the Web and delivers software best practices through guidelines, templates, and tool mentors.

Although Rational Rose has the largest market share, "it's a game of leapfrog now in the UML space," says Giga Group's Barnett. "We are not early in the product life cycle, but we are still early in the mainstream rollout phase."

Taking Partners
Modeling vendors are sought-after partners for development software vendors. Most of the early and recent partnership announcements involve Rational Rose, which generates approximately two-thirds of the modeling market's revenue, estimated at between $400 million and $1 billion.

Three years ago, Microsoft licensed a subset of Rational Rose for its Visual Studio under the name Visual Modeler-and it's gaining acceptance. More than 500,000 copies of Visual Modeler have been licensed, and the relationship was extended and enhanced in late July. Rational and Microsoft will co-develop an extended version of the Visual Modeler component of Microsoft's Visual Studio product for release later this year. Cross-licensing between the companies will weave Rational Rose more tightly into Visual Studio, and Microsoft's software development teams have licensed other Rational products for internal use, as well.

Now, IBM is joining the crowd. In late June, it unveiled an alliance with Rational making Rational Rose plug-ins available for IBM's VisualAge for Java development tool. Using an XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) bridge as translator, VisualAge for Java code can be absorbed and modeled by Rational Rose. Called "round-trip engineering," this process will generate Java code from Java models. "IBM knows E-business system development," says Eric Schurr, VP and general manager of Rational's corporate marketing and suite products. "We will leverage their knowledge in this area with our Unified Process."

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