Cayenne Software Inc has signed a licensing agreement to use Microsoft’s Repository as a way of simplifying the exchange of information between development tools and easing integration. The Bedford, Massachusetts supplier of analysis and design modeling tools said yesterday it will incorporate Microsoft’s Repository directly into its core enterprise modeling products including: ObjectTeam, a component-based systems modeling tool; BusinessTeam; a business process and data modeling tool and DataTeam, a database design tool. Mike Lenaghan, director of development for Cayenne Software’s business modeling and database design group, said all the design tools rely on an underlying metamodel, that defines the metadata of what’s being designed. One problem is that until now every tool has had its own, proprietary metamodel, making communication between different tools very difficult: Increasingly, there’s been a requirement for people to be able to exchange data between different development tools. There have been some efforts but as yet there’s no standard way of doing it. Microsoft’s Repository is moving in the right direction for that to happen because it provides a standard way of storing and accessing the modeling data. Analysts agree that the Repository, essentially a central storage area, will eventually become an important focal point for managing business rules, models and other types of application- centric meta data. Lenaghan added that Cayenne intended to move away from using its proprietary storage mechanisms over the next two to three years and develop its tools on top of Microsoft’s Repository instead.
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