While vendors such as IBM and Borland Software are on the bandwagon behind the OMG’s Unified Modeling Language (UML) 2.0 specification for model-driven development, one critical player in the application development space remains on the sidelines.That would be Microsoft.If you listen to IBM Distinguished Engineer Alan Brown, Microsoft is pursuing its own agenda.”What they’re doing is they’re trying to create their own proprietary modeling standard,” through Microsoft’s Application Designer technology, Brown said. A Microsoft official, Keith Short, an architect in the company’s Visual Studio group, provided an in-depth response. The company indeed has no plans to directly support UML 2.0 but is deferring to partners to provide that backing, he says. “We’ve taken a slightly different view of model-driven development. What we try to do is really to look around at what developers are actually doing and see where we can add value with model-driven development,” Short said. Previously, Microsoft has described UML 2.0 as being of limited interest to developers. Microsoft’s modeling approach for the upcoming Visual Studio 2005 Team System platform for architects involves four elements: * Application Designer modeling language, to define reusable applications that can provide or use services.* Class Designer, for code visualization.* System Definition Designer, to package services for deployment. * Logical Datacenter Designer, which provides a virtual picture of a datacenter. The tools are built in accordance with the company’s Domain-Specific Languages (DSL) technology for building custom designers for visual, domain-specific languages. UML 2.0 can be viewed as sort of a collection of DSLs, Short said. But UML is not precise enough to map to underlying frameworks like ASP.Net, he said. Developers can use Microsoft’s modeling technology to build UML 2.0 diagrams if they choose, Short said. That seems like a decent-enough compromise. But it sure would be nice if a leading vendor like Microsoft could directly support what many consider to be a budding industry standard. Technology Industry