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Pathfinder Solutions started in 1995 as a privately held partnership of experienced and successful MDA practitioners. Pathfinder's strong focus on client success combined with a service and tools product mix has sustained solid product and revenue growth. With over a decade of singular technical focus on model transformation for high performance/embedded systems, Pathfinder PathMATE environment is the most capable and mature technology available. Pathfinder's more well-known clients include Abbott Laboratories, Battelle Memorial Institute, Boeing, E. F. Johnson, Ericsson, General Motors, GTE, Invensys/Foxboro, Lockheed/Martin, Nortel, Polaroid, Raytheon, and Textron Systems.
Pathfinder's Model Automation and Transformation Environment - PathMATE - was first released in 1996. It consisted of the open and extensible model transformation engine, rules/templates for generating C++ code and formatted MS Word reports, and a model-level debugging tool. This initial release included a full integration with Popkin's System Architect modeling tool while still maintaining the original open PathMATE toolset architecture, keeping independence from the model editor, a characteristic maintained through the present.
PathMATE was originally based on the Shlaer-Mellor Object-Oriented Analysis method and notation. In 1997, the Object Management Group (OMG) released the Unified Modeling Language (UML) standard version 1.0. Pathfinder's next major release included UML support, defining a profile for best use of UML with PathMATE, specifying an executable subset of UML and refining key execution semantics. In this release, PathMATE also introduced support for the OMG Standard Action Semantics, replacing the Shlaer-Mellor data flow diagrams with a textual action language to specify fine grained behavior in the models.
At this time PathMATE leveraged the OMG's XMI specification which allowed UML tools to exchange model data in an XML format. Pathfinder added Rational Rose and Artisan Real-Time Studio to the set of supported editors in 2000. In addition, Java code generation was added in 2000, and highly optimized C in 2001. In 2002, PathMATE broadened its UML profile, supporting Harel statechart semantics, including transition and exit actions, composite states, history states, and unlabelled transitions.
2003 saw advanced deployment configurations supporting multiple threads and processes in the generated systems. In addition advanced capabilities were developed for automated testing in Spotlight, the model-level test and debug tool. In 2004, the transformation engine was re-hosted to integrate into Eclipse, the leading environment for software tool integration. Since PathMATE itself is an MDA system built of platform independent models, this extensive re-hosting from MS .NET to Eclipse, and C++ and C# to Java was actually reasonably straightforward. In addition, a PathMATE GUI was added to specifically manage the wide range of transformation, marking and deployment options afforded the user.
In 2005, PathMATE integrated with Rational Software Modeler, IBM Rational's next generation UML editor. In addition, the tools were upgraded to support UML2.0. Again leveraging the flexibility of the core PathMATE architecture this work was completed rapidly and passed IBM's rigorous "Ready for Rational Software" certification process with flying colors, making PathMATE one of the first toolsets of any kind to be certified in the new RSM/RSD environment. IBM Rational positions PathMATE as the key technology for deploying high performance embedded systems from its RSM/RSD environment.Pathfinder continues to work within the OMG to define the standards supporting MDA, including the MOF Models to Text template language, Model-level Testing and Debugging, UML Profile for Real-time and Embedded Systems, XMI Conformance Certification Test Suite, and the Executable UML specifications.
By 2006 a series of refinements in the approach taught by Pathfinder Solutions. and applied by their customers were built into the latest revision of their modeling method, now termed Platform-Independent Model Driven Development (PI-MDD). Key aspects of this approach now include the organization of logical architecture components by level of abstraction using the Axis of Abstraction, a streamlined approach to building coherent, complete and efficient behavioral strategies with Key Scenario Modeling, and direct incorporation of custom Domain-Specific automation through Implicit Bridging. These refinements delivered dramatic improvements in customer business results, doubling overall development team productivity and boosting quality 10x within one year of adoption.
In addition to consistently delivering substantial gains in business results, key code generation technologies in PathMATE were aggregated and refined into Self Optimization. This capability is unique to PathMATE, providing the unprecedented capability to automatically self-optimize the systems's implementation code as it is being generated. Aggressively leveraging key characteristics of the PI-MDD approach including Platform-independent Action Language (PAL), PathMATE takes advantage of the complete and easy access it has to all model details, allowing it to generate system implementations that are ruthlessly streamlined and exquisitely optimized - all automatically. Head-to-head performance tests by the JSSEO/SIAP program office showed that PI-MDD systems generated from PathMATE were as much at 30% smaller and 70% faster than equivalent systems generated from an implementation-code-focused toolset.
With the Telelogic Rhapsody UML editor building a dominant position in the high performance systems development market, a PathMATE integration with this tool bought the PI-MDD method. to this large body of modelers in 2007. Now truly platform-independent models could be constructed with the popular Rhapsody modeling tool, delivering the resulting simplicities and efficiencies of the generated high performance systems. An Ericsson AB study showed in side-by-side comparison that PI-MDD models are approximately 1/2 as complex as models built with an implementation-code-focused modeling approach, delivering obvious gains in easy of initial deployment, maintainability and concise generated system implementation.
As the MDD tools market consolidates under the IBM umbrella and the Pathfinder solution perspective broadens, Pathfinder Solutions has been invited to resell both the Telelogic products under the Telelogic Alliance Partner Program and the IBM Value-Added Reseller for Rational products. This combines the convenience of simplified order and maintenance processes and the expert attention and support of Pathfinder's expert staff with the same discounting and deep factory software support previously available directly from IBM. This blend of depth of expertise from Pathfinder and breadth of offerings from IBM brings the best of both to the customer from a single point.
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