The entire history of software engineering is that of the rise in levels of abstraction. Executable UML is the next logical, and perhaps inevitable, evolutionary step in the ever-rising level of abstraction at which programmers express software solutions. Rather than elaborate an analysis product into a design product and then write code, application developers of the future will use tools to translate abstract application constructs into executable entities... This shift is made possible by the confluence of four factors: 1. The development of the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) standards by the Object Management Group (OMG) 2. The adoption of the Precise Action Semantics for the Unified Modeling Language specification by the OMG in November of 2001 3. A proposed profile of UML—Executable UML—supports creating a complete and implementation-neutral self-contained expression of application functionality. Steven J. Mellor and Marc J. Balcer define this profile in their book Executable UML: A Foundation for Model-Driven Architecture 4. The availability of high-quality Model Compilers and Virtual Execution Environments (VEEs) that provide "out of the box" platforms upon which Executable UML models can execute. These VEEs, which exist today in a somewhat incipient stage, will someday soon reduce low-level system architectures to near-commodity status.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The entire history of software engineering is that of the rise in levels of abstraction. Executable UML is the next logical, and perhaps inevitable, evolutionary step in the ever-rising level of abstraction at which programmers express software solutions. Rather than elaborate an analysis product into a design product and then write code, application developers of the future will use tools to translate abstract application constructs into executable entities... This shift is made possible by the confluence of four factors: 1. The development of the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) standards by the Object Management Group (OMG) 2. The adoption of the Precise Action Semantics for the Unified Modeling Language specification by the OMG in November of 2001 3. A proposed profile of UML—Executable UML—supports creating a complete and implementation-neutral self-contained expression of application functionality. Steven J. Mellor and Marc J. Balcer define this profile in their book Executable UML: A Foundation for Model-Driven Architecture 4. The availability of high-quality Model Compilers and Virtual Execution Environments (VEEs) that provide "out of the box" platforms upon which Executable UML models can execute. These VEEs, which exist today in a somewhat incipient stage, will someday soon reduce low-level system architectures to near-commodity status." in the context of "Grady Booch (2002) "The Limits of Software". Lecture September 2002; Cited in: Gerry Boyd (2003) "Executable UML: Diagrams for the Future." published at devx.com, February 5, 2003." to mean that wisdom is timeless.