CCL: A lightweight ORM embedding in clean

Abstract

Agile software development advocates a rapid iterative process where working systems are delivered at each iteration. For information systems, this drive to produce something working soon, makes it tempting to skip conceptual domain modeling. The long term benefits of developing an explicit conceptual model are traded for the short term benefit of reduced overhead. A possible way to reconcile conceptual modeling with a code-centric agile process is by embedding it in a programming language. We investigate this approach with CCL, a compact textual notation for embedding Object-Role Models in the functional language Clean. CCL enables specification of Clean types as derivatives of conceptual types. Together with its compact notation, this means that defining data types with CCL as intermediary requires no more programming effort than defining data types directly. Moreover, because embedded ORM is still ORM, mappings to other ORM representations remain possible at any time. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.