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I am currently preparing a new release for my GenGMF project. Because the new meta model contains important but incompatible changes I have migrated the GenGMF tooling to a new name space and created a migration script for converting the specific editor models. The new meta model is much smaller than the old one which results in smaller models — I’ve eliminated the need for the mapping elements in the templates. To make the migration as easy as possible I’ve created some helper functions to move corresponding attributes and references. Only the “real” changes in the meta model are migrated using a Xtend script.

To demonstrate the facilities of the CrossNamespaceCopier I’ve created a small meta model…

As you see the Class2 from the “http://source.namespace” has been eliminated in the “http://target.namespace” and both attributes have been moved - attribute2 to Class1 and attribute3 to Class3. In order to migrate a model instance one has to call the CrossNamespaceCopier which copies the objects while migrating the name spaces according to rules previously set. OtherClass objects from the “http://other.namespace” will be copied as they are. All references and attributes which could not be automatically migrated need to copied in a small script manually.

extension CrossNamespaceCopier;

namespace::target::Class1 migrate(namespace::source::Class1 sc1)
:   let tc1 =
    // initialization for the copier, but the
    // let statement needs to be in the beginning
    (   crossNsInitStaticInstance()
    ->  crossNsSetupNamespaceMapping(
            "http://source.namespace",
            "http://target.namespace")
    // the content for the tc1 variable
    ->  (   (namespace::target::Class1)
            crossNsCopy(sc1)))
    // skipping Class2 in source
:   tc1.setClass3Reference(
            (namespace::target::Class3)
            sc1.class2Reference.class3Reference
            .crossNsCopy())
    // pull up attribute2
->  tc1.setAttribute2(
            sc1.class2Reference.attribute2)
    // pull down attribute3
->  tc1.class3Reference.setAttribute3(
            sc1.class2Reference.attribute3)
    // uninitializing
->  crossNsReleaseStaticInstance()
->  tc1
;

You will find the CrossNamespaceCopier as well as the demo files contained in a zip file.

GMF, the Graphical Modeling Framework supports the creation of graphical editors. For beginners it is very hard to learn. The included wizard has a lot of disadvantages, but it is o.k. for a start. Furthermore the GMF models are very complex and hard to handle. There are different solutions to shorten the time needed for creating a graphical editor:

EuGENia

… supports the development of GMF based editors using annotations in your metamodel (*.ecore) - preferably generated using Emfatic. Dimitrios Kolovos has written a nice tutorial and created a screencast.

ATLflow

Like in EuGENia - annotations in the metamodel are used to create a graphical editor. It is part of a complete tool chain for model transformations based on ATL. It is used for bootstrapping parts of ATLflow itself.

GenGMF

… uses a completely different approach. The GMF models are created from template-like tree structures. A template consist of GMF elements - just ready for duplicating for each metamodel element it is associated with. It is recommended to have some experience with the GMF models, before starting with GenGMF. GenGMF has been developed to support the creation of editors with a lot of metamodel elements.

Both annotation based solutions are not able to cover all the features possible with GMF, because the GMF models are created using the information stored in the metamodel. The template based approach GenGMF offers a lot more flexibility at the cost of a more complex model.

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.

There is a realy cool project located at http://www.deepamehta.de/ ! It lets you work in network with visualized networks while browsing the web and gathering information from the sites.

On 21th March will be an introduction into the software in the new thinking store in berlin x-berg.

Do you need money? Even if not - OpenUsability is a to-be-supported project. As el writes OpenUsability needs one hour of your valuable time in the time from 6th till 10th February for improving Wikipedia in an usability test. You will get 15 € for one hour of effort. Just write an email to el and support OpenUsability (the email address is mentioned in this blog article)!