On his weblog Martin Fowler expressed an interesting opinion about Model Driven Architecture (MDA) and the use of UML.
He speaks out what I have experienced in a lot of projects. The model driven approach is heavyweight and often impractical.
One reason might be the lack of reliable and fast,handy tools especially when it comes to code generation, an other is the inaccuracy of UML in terms of programming languages.
Often this leads to a “overstereotyped” models which are almost useless outside the problem domain and for new team members as well. I’m curious about MDA will change that.
UML is great. I recommend to use it but mostly to communicate design ideas to others.
The rest of the documentation can be easily generated from the sourcefiles, e.g. with javadoc or C# xmldoc.
What is your experience?