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Some days ago I went to my dentist for the regular check up. They wanted me to sign a form about the transferability of claims to the mediserv GmbH and about inquiries about my credit score to rating agents. I declined my signature and put the blank form on the counter commenting that I will sign it on demand. They looked at me like I am the only one who cares about the wording in a contract. Maybe John Doe will sign it but that’s not my name…

As of today I have finished my study of applied informatics at the FHTW Berlin (University of Applied Sciences). The last exam I had to pass was the oral presentation of my diploma thesis. After an hour with a high level of adrenalin I must say that the effort I have invested into the thesis and the presentation payed off. Thanks to all thesis readers and presentation listeners ho have not been named - I’ve got full marks for both.

During the last days I have prepared a paper about the thesis for the MDSE 2008 workshop in Berlin. After my two MetamodelDoc presentations this would be my third public talk but the first in English. I look forward to see you there.

Update: The thesis is now available for download in the Publications section.

While preparing our relocation which will take place in October I am currently tidying the shelves in my flat from outdated computer magazines. I found some loose pages from the (in the mean time abandoned) magazine “PC-Heimwerker”, issue 3-96. They contain a lot of transcribed paper mailings from users to other users - helping each other…

< < < swooooosh > > >

I am back in the year 2008 - asking my self: “Why did I have kept the pages?” … Probably because of an article about Bresenham’s line algorithm in 16-bit-assembler(!).

Using search engines, news groups, forums or mailling lists  on a daily basis - life has become so easy…

I am happy to announce that I have finished the writing part of my diploma thesis and that everything has been bundled and filed to the university.

The thesis was written about the creation of a graphical editor for a model driven software development process. The abstract follows below:

„base“ is a model-driven software development environment for internal use by „b+m Informatik GmbH Berlin“. For editing models in „base“ a tree-based editor has been used in the past, which builds on the Eclipse Modelling Framework (EMF). A tree representation in particular is difficult to manage for the dataflow model, because conceptionally the model represents a graph in the mathematical sense of the word. The objective of this thesis was essentially optimizing the developmental process in „base“. To this end, a graphic editor for dataflow models was developed on the basis of the Graphical Modelling Framework (GMF). The meta-model, on which the dataflow models are based, contains 20 element types, which can be placed directly in the editor’s drawing area. The complexity of the models used in GMF increases over proportionally though with the number of element types and is consequently difficult to administrate. This was the reason for developing „GenGMF“ instead of implementing a graphic editor with GMF itself. „GenGMF“ is a Domain Specific Language with an appropriate generic model-to-model transformation for the automatic construction of GMF models. The dataflow editor was modeled using this new development for the construction of graphic editors. Using „GenGMF“ for development of the dataflow editor allowed construction of a „GenGMF“ model requiring 72% less model elements than generated GMF models. In addition, it did not have to be manually adjusted. The result is ease of use for presentation in the graphic dataflow editor.

If you have any questions regarding the thesis, „GenGMF“ or „base“ just send me a note.

I’ve got a letter from my university stating the title of my diploma theses “Entwicklung eines graphischen Editors zur Unterstützung eines modellgetriebenen Entwicklungsprozesses” (Development of a graphical editor to support a model driven software development process) and that I should finish my work before the 28^th July (which is 127 days ahead).

I don’t have a working telephone since last Sunday.

I’ve called my telephone provider to make it work on Tuesday. They answered that they created a service ticket and will call me back later.

Nothing happened.

I’ve called again on Wednesday. They wanted to call me at least the next day.

Nothing happened.

I’ve called again on Friday morning. They wanted to call me back.

Nothing happened.

I’ve called again on Friday evening. (As a remember - I am waiting since Tuesday for a call). They wanted to call me back. While answering I may have spoken a bit to tartly, but…

I’ve got a call within two minutes.

In this call I’ve heard, that there is no ticket, so they made one (guaranteed). It is unlikely that I will be called back before the weekend, but…

About one week later I’ve got a call on my mobile phone. Everything did worked except that the calls didn’t come through. There was a bug in a dumb telephony socket (not really - but it just did not work)…

I have got the time to set up the entry site for my currently most active project MetamodelDoc. It is an Eclipse Plug-In for generating a documentation of a metamodel. At present this has to be an Ecore metamodel. As a sample I’ve generated a documentation of the Ecore metamodel (which is expressed in it self). If you want to give it a try just install the plugins via the Update Site. The generation is triggered from the context menu of an .ecore-file.

Do you see the difference between the following two pictures?

It was the result of the CatChaser pinning two balloons and part of one of the eight talks held at the Eclipse DemoCamp in Hamburg. A lot of interesting projects and concepts where presented. They made a video of the talks which will be available soon.

One of the intended presenters wasn’t available. They asked me to talk - as substitute - about MetamodelDoc. As I had prepared my slides for the DemoCamp in Berlin already - I agreed. The slides are - of course - available.

Update

After the event in Hamburg the event in Berlin was a success too. There are a lot of interesting projects. One of them - ObjectTeams - I will give a try. It could be described as sophisticated and object oriented AspectJ with dynamic binding (well - ehm …, the language constructs are not the same) and it integrates very nicely into the JDT environment (by replacing the JDT-core plugin :-/). An interesting feature is - you could de-/activate an aspect (it is called Team here) during the lifetime of an object and on a per object basis.

I got my telephone working. What a story. They managed it to send a service engineer who replaced the wall socket.

Congratulations to ewt!

It’s about one month ago since I’ve read a flyer on the pinwall in the entrance of our house saying that the cable tv provider will change on the 10th of August. They made also an offer to use a telephone line and internet over this cable. After my Holiday (which was very nice (except for the loss of my jacket from my bycycle carrier)) I’ve made a contract to switch to the new provider with a seemless switch for the telephone line. Some days later was another flyer on the pinwall telling me that the provider switch will happen on the 31th August. Oh what a Happening - a service techniker told me that they need more than a week to switch. In the meantime my previos telephone provider just cut of my telephone line. I will get my telephone back when a new “multimedia plug” gets installed in my flat on the 13th of September - hopefully.