I. Schieferdecker and A. Hartman (Eds.): ECMDA-FA 2008, LNCS 5095, pp. 419–431, 2008. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008 MDA-Based Methodologies: An Analytical Survey Mohsen Asadi and Raman Ramsin Department of Computer Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran mohsenasadi@mehr.sharif.edu, ramsin@sharif.edu Abstract. Model-Driven Development (MDD) has become a familiar software engineering term in recent years, thanks to the profound influence of the Model Driven Architecture (MDA). Yet MDD, like MDA itself, defines a general framework, and as such is a generic approach rather than a concrete development methodology. Methodology support for MDA has been rather slow in coming, yet even though several MDA-based methodologies have emerged, they have not been objectively analyzed yet. The need remains for a critical appraisal of these methodologies, mainly aimed at identifying their achievements, and the shortcomings that should be addressed. We provide a review of several prominent MDA-based methodologies, and present a criteria- based evaluation which highlights their strengths and weaknesses. The results can be used for assessing, comparing, selecting, and adapting MDA-based methodologies. Keywords: Model Driven Architecture, Software Development Methodology, Evaluation Criteria. 1 Introduction The Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) proposed by the Object Management Group (OMG) defines an approach to information systems specification that separates the specification of system functionality from the specification of the implementation of that functionality on a specific technology platform. The primary goals of MDA are portability, interoperability, and reusability of software. To achieve these goals, MDA raises the level of abstraction and strives to automate the software generation process. There are a number of important OMG standards at the core of MDA: The Unified Modeling Language (UML), Meta Object Facility (MOF), XML Metadata Interchange (XMI), and Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM) [1]. These standards define the core infrastructure of the MDA, and have greatly contributed to modern systems modeling. The core standards of the MDA (UML, MOF, XMI, and CWM) form the basis for building coherent schemes for authoring, publishing, and managing models within a model-driven architecture. MDA provides an approach for specifying systems in terms of models; system requirements are specified in the Computation-Independent Model (CIM); the Platform-Independent Model (PIM) is the model that describes the system design independent of the implementation platform; the Platform-Specific Model (PSM), on