Getting feedback from adopters

The OMG Technical meeting at Minneapolis is over, I will come back to Nantes tomorrow.

This kind of event is a very good opportunity to meet users of the tools we have developped for Eclipse. As anybody can download these tools, it is difficult to know precisely how they are used, and by who.

For example, this week I discovered that Nicolas Rouquette from the NASA, was using the MoDisco Model Browser to inspect complex XML documents! This browser has not been developped for this purpose. But, as MoDisco comes with an automatic transformation of XML files into EMF models, you can load any XML file directly into the browser, and benefit from all its navigation, filtering and customization capabilities!

Just click on an XML document, select the menu "Open with > Other..." and pick the "MoDisco Model Browser".

We really appreciate all these kinds of feedback: they are of great help while defining our roadmap :-))

If you have adopted (or are going to adopt) MoDisco , feel free to post your feedback (good or bad, it helps in both cases) on this blog, or on the MoDisco forum .

Helios is out. Now, let's take the Indigo train!

How to install MoDisco with Helios?

This year, for the Helios release, the Modeling Package offers a very simple way to install the Modeling components.

The Modeling Package is one of the Eclipse pre-packaged distributions available from the download page (http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/).

Once you have downloaded and launched this package, just click on the "Install Modeling Components" button from the toolbar.

This button opens a window displaying all the available Helios Modeling components. Select MoDisco and click on the Finish button.

A wizard appears to display all the MoDisco components which will be installed.

Click on Next, then click on the "I accept the terms of the licence agreement" to finish the installation.

Restart Eclipse and it's done! You have now access to the features provided by MoDisco 0.8.

Some of these features are directly available to manipulate or create EMF models, without having to write a line of code:

• Customizable model browser
• Reverse-engineering of Java source code into a Java model
• Reverse-engineering of XML files into XML models
• Reverse-engineering of a structure of a project into a KDM-Source model
• Transformation of KDM-Code models into UML2

In addition, as a platform for Software Modernization projects, MoDisco also provides a lot of components to help you in the development of model-driven reverse-engineering tools.

Enjoy!

Using EMF to control Eclipse plugins development rules

This week I am in Minneapolis to attend an OMG Technical Meeting.

Today I participated to the 2nd Eclipse & OMG Symposium where I talked about MoDisco and how we support the specifications defined by ADM, the OMG task force working on Software Modernization. I presented an example where we use KDM (Knowledge Discovery Metamodel) and SMM (Structured Metrics Metamodel) to control the quality of Eclipse plugins.

We wanted to check automatically some rules which are mandatory by the yearly synchroneous release:

• Version number ends with « qualifier »
• Source code must use ICU4J classes
• The project must contain an « about.html » file
• Packages name should start with the plug-in Id
• Plug-in must not contain JARs files
• Plug-in should contain only one « message.properties » and « Message.java » files

We also wanted to check some rules that we had defined internally at Mia-Software:

• “PLUGIN_ID” variable of “Activator.java” should be initialized with the plug-in Id
• Plug-in Id and Project name should be equal
• «Bundle-Vendor» property value of « MANIFEST.MF » should be « %providerName »
• « plugin.properties » should declare a « providerName » property
• «Bundle-Name» property value of « MANIFEST.MF » should be « %pluginName »
• « plugin.properties » should declare a « pluginName » property

Of course, we could have implemented these rules by using the APIs provided by the plugins already provided by Eclipse (org.eclipse.core, org.eclipse.pde, org.eclipse.pde, etc). But all these APIs are not homogeneous, and it is not always easy to find the right API to use. That's why we decided to experiment an other approach.

Our idea is to use these APIs only to create EMF models of the plugin. Then, once the models are created, we can implement the rules by using only EMF APIs.

In our case, we have used MoDisco to create seven EMF models:

• A KDMSource model describing the organization of the plugin project (files and directories)

• A Java model describing the Java source code of the plugin
• A Manifest model to describe the content of the MANIFEST.MF file
• Two XML models to describe the content of the .project and .classpath files
• Two KDMCode models to describe the content of the plugin.properties and the build.properties files

These models contain all the information required to check the rules listed below.

Rather than directly displaying the violations found in an Eclipse plug-in into the Eclipse Problems View, we use an SMM model to represent the result of the analysis. Then, we have developped a generic tool which displays each rule violation contained in this SMM model into the Eclipse Problems View.

The benefit of this approach is that you just have to know EMF APIs to implement the rules, or use any EMF-compliant tool (such as OCL, ATL or QVT). Another benefit is that the result (the SMM model) is independent from how you want to deliver it to the user. Here we have injected the violations into the Eclipse Problem View, but we could have generated an Excel file or populated a tool such as Sonar.

I have still some little things to improve in this plugin, and I'll try to to commit it this summer as a use-case in MoDisco.

Meanwhile, the complete presentation is available on slideshare.

MoDisco Eclipse-OMG Symp 2010

New MoDisco homepage

The MoDisco homepage is now based on the new template provided by Heiko Behrens from XText team.

Some modifications have been done in the CSS to avoid the blinking effect on quick links. This CSS is available here : http://www.eclipse.org/MoDisco/style.css

We still have to integrate a screencast, but it's already a good improvement.

Many thanks to Heiko !

MoDisco is ready for Helios

MoDisco 0.8 RC2 has been released last week. It contains all the features which will be shipped with the final Eclipse Helios release (available June 23, 2010).

Here are the main features added since MoDisco 0.8 M5:

Edition of models

MoDisco provides a browser to inspect complex EMF models. Now it is possible to use the ModelBrowser to edit and modify the instances of the loaded EMF model:

• Edit attributes through the Properties view
• Create new children elements
• Delete a model element (with all its references)
• Cut/Copy/Paste a model element
• Undo/Redo modifications
• Save and Save As the model

In addition, when the model is externally modified, the browser is automatically refreshed.

Collapse Link option

One of the main differences between the MoDisco ModelBrowser and the default EMF Reflective Editor is the way the children elements are displayed.

In the Reflective Editor, all the children model elements are placed directly under the parent model element: you don't see how the children are connected to the parent.

In the MoDisco ModelBrowser, the children are grouped under an intermediate node corresponding to the link defined in the metamodel.

This feature is very useful when instances of the same type can be associated through several different links: you can know precisely how the children are connected to the parent.

But in some cases this option is not convenient (for example when each children of a given type can only been attached with one relation).

That's why we have added a new option to the Customization model and corresponding editor: you can now collapse a link to hide this link in the browser and display the corresponding children directly under the parent.

Reusable Model TreeView

The TreeView developped for the ModelBrowser is now compliant with CNF (Common Navigator Framework).

This TreeView displays the model elements properties and allows accessing to related objects by navigating through relations defined in the metamodel.

Now this TreeView can be reused and integrated to any component compliant with CNF, and then benefit from the customization and extensibity mechanisms to dynamically configure which properties and relations are visible, add derived attributes and relations, and change how the model elements are displayed (label, color, icon, ...).

For example, the TreeView can easily be integrated into the Project Explorer to inspect the content of any EMF model:

The TreeView has already been adopted by the Papyrus team to replace the default treeview in the Package Explorer.

Java Model Query creation wizard

MoDisco provides a QueryManager to allow executing model queries independently of any technology. Drivers for Java, OCL and JXPath are provided to execute queries written with these technologies.

Since MoDisco 0.8 M6, a wizard facilitates the creation of queries written in Java:

The wizard generates the corresponding Java class stub, with the correct imports and generic parameters instantiation.

EMF Facet, a new project for model customization and extensibility

How to dynamically extend and combine existing Ecore definitions without having to modify them?

EMF Facet, a new project we have proposed to create under EMFT, will propose dynamic extension mechanisms for all EMF-based tools exposing a view on a model:

• Navigation tools (browser, navigator, etc);
• Graphical modeling tools;
• Code or documentation generation (M2T) tools;
• Model-to-model transformation (M2M) tools.

Our proposition provides a solution to introduce new viewpoints (or "facets") on existing models:

• Extending an existing metamodel (Ecore model) in a non-intrusive way by adding new types, attributes, operations and relations. New relations could be used to compose several models by linking their elements.
• Computing an extension by executing queries against an existing model; queries will be implemented by making use of existing query mechanisms (e.g. considering Java, ATL, EMFQuery, Xpath, etc)

The Query "subClassifiers" visible as a "virtual" relation on Class

Some of these mechanisms have already been developped in the MoDisco project. But, as they could be reused by tools not related to software modernization (the scope of the MoDisco project), we have decided to contribute the corresponding components to EMF Facet.

In a previous post, I have presented these components (Facet Manager and Query Manager).

In another post, I have also illustrated how Facets can be used to extend the Java metamodel to highlight JUnit concepts.

Architecture-Driven Modernization Case-Studies

William Ulrich and Philip Newcomb have recently published "Information Systems Transformation, Architecture-Driven Modernization Case-Studies", a reference book on Software Modernization.

This book has been written by two of the most active members of the Architecture-Driven Modernization task force, the OMG initiative which aims at defining standard specifications for the modernization of existing software systems. They first introduce Architecture-Driven Modernization technologies, standards and approaches. Then they have compiled ten detailled case-studies on real modernization projects on various business domains (bank, administration, tourism, air-trafic management, combat system) and technologies (COBOL, VB6, Powerbuilder, ...).

With Gabriel Barbier (Mia-Software), Yves Lennon (Sodifrance/SoftMaint) , Hugo Brunelière and Frédéric Jouault (INRIA/AtlanMod) we have written one of these case-studies.

In this chapter we first describe the modernization process and tools used by Sodifrance to migrate Software Systems. The approach has been imagined and protyped thanks to a collaboration established in 1993 bewteen Sodifrance and Jean Bezivin, from University of Nantes, who was working on the representation of existing software systems with a technology based on sNets, a first generation of model engineering platform.

The sNets technology was immediately used by Sodifrance to develop a semantic discovery tool, named Semantor, to analyse any COBOL program and provide a fine-grained level of information about its internal structure and data. This tool is still evolving and has been renamed Mia-Mining.

In parallel, at the end of 1998, based on the experience gained in the rebuilding of an insurance company’s contract management system, where modelling and tailored code-generators were successfully used, Sodifrance started developing its own model transformation technology. From this work, in association with Jean Bezivin who brought his knowledge about early work at OMG on MOF, was born Mia-Studio, a model transformation tool to develop and run model-to-model transformation rules and model-to-text generation templates.

With these tools, Sodifrance has progressively built a chain which can be used on architecture migration projects, to transform existing applications from client-server to n-tiers and SOA architectures.

This chain is composed of three main steps:

1. Extraction of a comprehensive model (the initial model) of the existing application from its assets (source code, configuration files, development repositories, etc).
2. Transformation of the model of the existing application into a comprehensive model of the target application (the target model).
3. Generation of the source code of the target application from the model of the target application.

To illustrate how this chain can be used, the chapter describes a project conducted by Sodifrance to migrate an application from VB6 to JEE for Amadeus Hospitality the leader in IT solutions provided for the tourism and travel industry.

The initial application, named RMS (Revenue Management System), was developed in VB6, and was performing queries on an Oracle database. It was composed of 300 screens, 200 of them displaying charts (pie charts, bar charts or line graphs). The VB6 code was composed of 306,000 source lines of code, VB6 code in 216 classes and 261 modules.

The migration project was completed by Sodifrance in 1,600 man-days with ten engineers over a year. The transformation of all the VB6 code (access to data, business rules and interface) was 80% automated, while the definition of the screens (Forms) was only 50% automated, due to the necessity to redesign them for a web mode. The new version of RMS is now composed of about 300,000 lines of code in 1,000 Java classes and 310 Jsp (Java Server Pages).

In the last part of the chapter, we present MoDisco, the Eclipse project dedicated to software modernization. This project has been created by AtlanMod during Modelplex, a research project funded by the European Community.

Because of the widely different nature and technological heterogeneity of legacy systems, there are several different ways to extract models from such systems. MoDisco proposes a generic and extensible metamodel-driven approach to model discovery. A basic framework, including implementations of OMG standards such as KDM or SMM, and a set of guidelines are provided to the Eclipse contributors to bring their own solutions to discover models in a variety of legacy systems.

One of the first industrial use cases using MoDisco has been the understanding of a Large Scale Data Intensive Geological system for WesternGeco, a geophysical services company