A synergistic model-driven approach for persistence modeling with UML

The Model Driven Development (MDD) approach proposes that models (and model-to-model transformations) play the main role on system development. However, there is not a consensual notation to model persistence based upon object-relational mapping frameworks: while UML lacks specific resources for persistence modeling, the entity-relationship model does not make reference to the dynamic concepts existing in UML.This paper proposes MD-JPA, a UML profile for persistence modeling based on the well-known Java Persistence API 2 (JPA) standard for object-relational mapping, pursuing the modeling of transient and persistent elements in a more coherent and synergistic way. This paper describes the main characteristics of MD-JPA as well as the way that models that adopt such profile can them be used to generate a Java implementation by the application of the proposed model transformations on a MDD approach. Finally, an open source tool was developed to make the results of this work available to the community.