caCORE 3.x Software Development Metholology

The caCORE iterative software development process combines for maximum advantage, elements from the Rational Unified Process (RUP) and eXtreme Programming (XP). High level use cases are created using the domain expertise available at CBIIT to evaluate existing projects and investigate industry standards.

Once the use case analysis is completed, iterative functional design and development allow for rapid and segmented application development. During an iteration, all of the software development activities are executed. The artifacts associated with each functional iteration include: detailed "use cases" describing the function; class and sequence diagrams; a system architecture diagram; the actual software code; a published API; a project plan describing subsequent iterations; and a test plan for software validation.

UML modeling and use case development is performed using a UML modeling tool (Enterprise Architect). An automatic code generation process is used to generate Java source code from the UML. The caCORE UML model is exported from the Enterpise Architect file to an XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) file. For caCORE release 3.2, caCORE SDK was used to read the XMI output from EA and generate the caCORE 3.2 system. We used the Java JET template language to generate the source code. Modifications to the object model are always made at the UML level, and not directly to the source code. For an illustration of the most current build process, refer to cacore Build Process Current Diagram.