MDA® provides value by producing models at varying levels of abstraction, from a conceptual view down to the smallest implementation detail.
The MDA model is related to multiple standards, including the Unified Modeling Language (UML), the Meta-Object Facility (MOF), XML Metadata Interchange (XMI), Enterprise Distributed Object Computing (EDOC), the Software Process Engineering Metamodel (SPEM), and the Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM).
OMG's ADTF (Analysis and Design Task Force) group leads this effort.
With some humour, the group chose ADM (MDA backwards) to name the study of reverse engineering.
The objective of ADM is to produce standards for model-based reverse engineering of legacy systems.
[4] Knowledge Discovery Metamodel (KDM) is the furthest along of these efforts, and describes information systems in terms of various assets (programs, specifications, data, test files, database schemas, etc.).
MDA envisages that the platform independent model (PIM), which represents a conceptual design realizing the functional requirements, will survive changes in realization technologies and software architectures.
A specific standard language for model transformation has been defined by OMG called QVT.
The OMG organization provides rough specifications rather than implementations, often as answers to Requests for Proposals (RFPs).
This is true for example for OMG's EMOF standard, which EMF approximates with its Ecore implementation.
Simple examples of architecture specifications include: Some key concepts that underpin the MDA approach (launched in 2001) were first elucidated by the Shlaer–Mellor method during the late 1980s.