Except for Microsoft’s Visual Studio and a promising Windows Workflow Foundation, there’s only one proprietory tool in their treasure chest, MagicDraw UML, the rest are free/open source software. Among the latter, AndroMDA is the most essential, with NHibernate being close second. Sapient reportedly contibuted their .Net Framework model “cartridges” to AndroMDA, which are used to convert UML class diagrams produced in MagicDraw into C# definitions. They are then utilizing home-grown Inversion of Control framework to inject implementation into hollow model code. The whole thing is held together with mandatory tests done with, what else, NUnit. By “mandatory” here I mean that these tests are not only necessary to deliver functionality, but are paramount in making this model-driven approach produce sane code.

Among other interesting things they said was that NHibernate is working wonderfully well for them, and that Spring.Net on the contrary is “not there yet.”