Often there are two ways to get from point A to point B, step by step or all at once. I grew up admiring Evel Knievel the legendary motorcycle stuntman. He soared from start to finish in a “single bound”… sometimes.
He attempted jumps over snakes, cars, buses, fountains and canyons. He suffered 433 bone fractures earning a mention in the Guinness Book of World Records.
We all love a daredevil, and we recognize when there is a high probability the big jump will end in a spectacular crashing failure! We may blush to think we hope to see the crash. In engineering development the more responsible approach involves smaller steps. Our projects cannot afford crashing and burning, however “thrilling” that may be!
Successful engineering development paths take measured steps with testing along the way. Each step moves forward; each step makes the product better. Test cases pass (again) before resuming the onward trek. Progress is incremental, always improving, advancing toward the goal in a way that never leaves the product broken.
A particularly worrisome “jump” leads across a gap such that valuable intellectual property is abandoned. Data format changes, incompatibilities or weak conversion result in orphaned IP. On the other hand, a connected, contiguous and smooth transition brings this IP forward preserving its inate value as well as leveraging its value to test the upgrade step just taken.
xtUML is characterized by (interpretive) model execution and behavior-preserving model translation. Since xtUML models are translatable, they can be translated “forward” along carefully chosen steps of an “incremental, never broken” path.
The future of xtUML (and BridgePoint technology) is along a path of open source, open standards and an active community ecosystem. The trick is navigating this path without losing the valuable intellectual property contained in hundreds of existing projects and applications. Thus, the path forward will be incremental, always advancing, never broken.
Watch the xtUML roadmap unfold along a path from OSS BridgePoint today to Papyrus xtUML tomorrow.