A Modelling Language to Support Evolution of Multi-Tenant Cloud Data Architectures

Jumagaliyev, Assylbek and Elkhatib, Yehia (2019) A Modelling Language to Support Evolution of Multi-Tenant Cloud Data Architectures. In: Proceedings - 2019 ACM/IEEE 22nd International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems, MODELS 2019 :. IEEE, pp. 139-149. ISBN 9781728125374

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Abstract

Multi-tenant data architectures enable efficient resource utilization in cloud applications, but are currently being implemented in industry and research using manual coding techniques that tend to be time consuming and error prone. We propose a novel domain-specific modeling language, CadaML, to automatically manage the development and evolution of cloud data architectures that (a) adopt multi-tenancy and/or (b) comprise of a combination of different storage solutions such as relational and non-relational databases, and blob storage. CadaML provides concepts and notations to support abstract modelling of a multi-tenant data architecture, and also provides tools to validate the data architecture and automatically produce application code. We rigorously evaluate CadaML through a user experiment where developers of various capabilities are asked to re-architect the data layer of an industrial business process analysis application. We observe that CadaML users required 3.5x less development time than manual coders. In addition to improved productivity, CadaML users highlighted other benefits gained in terms of reliability of generated code and usability.