Design and implementation of the Matilda distributed UML virtual machine

This paper describes a distributed UML virtual machine, called Matilda, which allows developers to design their applications as UML models and directly execute the models. Matilda accepts a UML model as an input, validates it against the UML metamodel, constructs a Java abstract syntax tree (JAST) according to the input model, and executes Java bytecode generated from the JAST. The architecture of Matilda is designed as a pipeline of plugins, each of which implements a functionality in Matilda such as validating UML models. The pipeline architecture allows Matilda to flexibly configure its structure and behavior by replacing a plugin with another one or changing the order of plugins. Also, Matilda can deploy plugins on multiple network hosts and seamlessly connect them to form a pipeline. This facilitates distributed software development in which developers collaboratively work on UML models at physically dispersed places. This paper describes the design, implementation and performance of Matilda.