Merks' Meanderings

Xcore on Training Wheels

2012-02-10T03:33:00.007-05:00

I've quietly been making excellent progress with Xcore. After getting IP approval, the first step was to migrate the code base to be hosted at Eclipse. I decided this was also an appropriate time to migrate EMF and XSD to use Git to preserve the github history of Xcore. All the cool kids are doing it. Being cool is very important. No one wants to be left out in the cold.

Unfortunately, learning Eclipse's Git tools has been a bit of a nightmare. Its poor support for proper line feed handling continues to be frustrating. I compare learning Git to being given an advanced new hammer, one without a handle, that if you just instruct it nicely to do what you want, will do the job ten times better than ever before. Only the instructional language is Gitinese. It's very hard to pronounce, with lots of German "ch"s (think hissing snake), "st"s, and "sp"s (think "sht" and "shp" where the "h" is implied), plenty of Dutch "g"s (think clearing your throat), and no end of "th"s (think "s" but with your tongue hanging way too far out; it is a very unusual sound if English is not your native language). Anyway, enough bashing Gitinese and the Germanic languages. Once you learn them, they all sound as if they were simply meant to be that way. Oh well, back to Xcore.
Of course we needed a logo, so I whipped one up. Maybe someone will contribute a nicer one. On a more substantial front, with the help of Dennis Hübner, we have our first builds of Xcore available. It's been contributed to the Juno repository. (Note that he's working on making EMF and XSD 2.8 build with Eclipse 3.5 so that we'll have more permissive version ranges that are properly tested.) I also finally found time to write a wiki tutorial for how to get started with Xcore. Lots of cool things are working rather nicely. We even have support for organizing imports. So have a look if you have the time.

Modeling Daze to Come

2012-01-10T07:00:00.011-05:00

My transition to Germany is nearing completion. I now have a three year visa to stay in Germany and I'm registered as living in Berlin. Amazingly the visa was acquired with roughly eight hours of time investment, including the four hour wait for the appointment, along with zero euros of financial investment. The best things in life are free.

The German process stands in sharp contrast to the Canadian process we followed for Frank. That cost many thousands of dollars and took the better part of a year. All I need now is a German tax number and a German bank account and I'll be ready for business in 2012. Speaking of business, there's a lot going on! Jonas recently blogged about the Eclipse Modeling Symposium scheduled for EclipseCon. If you'd like an opportunity to showcase Really Cool Things,™ please send in your proposal so that Jonas and I can find an appropriate slot for your facet.

The OMG is holding an Eclipse Symposium as well. It will be held the day before EclipseCon starts, i.e., Sunday, March 25th, 2012. It will focus on Eclipse technologies that implement and support OMG specifications. Ed Willink is helping organize it. If you're interested, I suggest you contact him at ed at willink dot me dot uk . You can also register just to attend. I'm looking forward to seeing the juxtaposition of the old and the new.

As you may have noticed, you simply can't have too many Modeling Days, so of course there will be another modeling day at JAX this year. Sven, Eike, and I are organizing it. If you'd like to get involved, please send your proposal to ed dot merks at gmail dot com. I expect I'll be able to understand more of the German content this year than I did last year. Maybe I'll even have plodded along far enough to speak some broken German by then.

To further round off an already well rounded event schedule, there's an Eclipse Day in Florence on May 4th. Can you think of a lovelier place to hold a Eclipse event? We're really looking forward to having a peek at part of the community we've seen less frequently.

At this point you might be wondering about deadlines for submissions. All I can say is don't ask about deadlines! Do it now. There's no time like the present. Time waits for no one, and most especially not for you. If you have time, and you expect to be in Berlin, Eike and I will be at the Eclipse User Group Stammtisch on January 31st.

Making the Move to Germany

2011-11-23T01:53:00.008-05:00

I haven't blogged for a quite a while, not for lack of content, but rather for lack of time. So much as happened in the past months! In August we had visitors from Germany. We took them to see Pacific Rim National Park, one of the most beautiful places on earth.

During this time we also started making plans for an extended stay in Germany, which, as you know, is the home of Really Cool Things.™ My ThinkPad was very old and totally tired, so I finally cracked open my wallet and bought a new Dell Precision M4600; I must have a keyboard with an ultranav. My new baby is fully loaded to the hilt with every desirable feature, including 16GB of 16MHz memory, two SSD drives, an i7-2920XM Quad Core, and more. It sure was a lot of work to get it set up, but I love it.

We've been in Germany since October 7th. Berlin is our home base. And of course we brought the girlies along! Since our arrival, I've been busier than ever with visits to itemis headquarters in Lünen, the Xtext guys in Kiel, EclipseCon Europe in Ludswigburg, as well as demo camps in Bonn and Dresden. We've even had a chance to go sightseeing in Rügen.

Just this past weekend I went to a friend's concert at Berliner Dom! I captured the experience with my brand new Nikon Coolpix S9100 with 18x wide optical zoom.

This week there's a stammtisch in Berlin on Thursday and next week Eike and I present at an itemis event in Bonn on Tuesday. Maybe we'll see you at one of those events! Later next week, Eike and I host an itemis training session in Oldenburg; yet another place I've never been. I'm pretty sure I've seen more of Germany in the past weeks than most Germans have seen in the past years.

It's quite clear now that Germany is the cool place to be for us to be, so we're making long term plans to stay here. It's kind of scary, but oh so exciting too. My German comprehension improves a little bit every day though my speaking abilities lag far behind, for lack of trying I'm told. In any case, I now have a very nice home office that includes a Dell UltraSharp U3011 monitor; I kiss it every morning because I love it so much.

Life is definitely very cool and exciting. I'll have to blog more often now that things are finally settling down. Xcore too is progressing well; stay tuned...

Xcore: Coolness Reborn

2011-08-08T21:56:00.007-05:00

The quest to Kiel has proven enlightening beyond expectation. Last week, as I approached the sanctuary of the Xtext team, sun glinting from the facade, I knew deep down that I was headed for the right place.

Xtext is the coolest of the cool projects at Eclipse today, and that's tough competition! Three of its four custodians, Sven, Sebastian, and Moritz, were there that Monday morning. We discussed the coolest things we could collectively conceive: Xcore, progeny of Ecore and Xbase. We decided to begin this new endeavor using a repository at github so we could immediately begin working as a team. (Of course we'll host this at Eclipse after we migrate EMF itself to Git.) Time flew yet much progress was made before the sun set on a great week.

We found time to write a proposal for a session at EclipseCon Europe 2011. If ever there was a Really Cool Thing,™ this definitely is it! Before I knew, I was back on a speeding plane, admiring the majesty that is Super Natural British Columbia.

I got home just in time for the final display of Vancouver's Celebration of Light. I was definitely in the mood to celebrate!

I'm extremely happy to have embarked on this cool quest. I look forward to excellent progress in the weeks to come. That vast desert of uncool is already fading from memory. To whet your appetite, here's how the Xcore model for the standard Library example looks:

This isn't just a pretty picture, we have a great deal that is working already! Don't just take my word for it, open source is a glass house; stay tuned. Of course all design decisions are subject to change. We look forward to feedback from the community.

The Quest for Coolness

2011-07-29T08:45:00.000-05:00

As you know from my previous blog, I've been thinking a great deal about "Really Cool Things."™ In fact, not only have I been thinking, I've taken action: I have embarked on a great quest. While wandering the vast desert of uncoolness, with nothing of interest as far as the eye could see, I thought I heard a voice as my eyes were drawn to a sparkle in the distant horizon. Could it be the enlightenment that I seek? The voice compelled me to go forth: "That which you seek is in Kiel," it whispered quietly. Meanwhile, my faithful companion found coolness in a stick.

Being somewhat impulsive, I immediately booked a flight to Germany. It leaves this coming Saturday and arrives on Sunday. From there my quest will continue; I think I'll start fasting. I know not what I'll find, never having been to Kiel, but I am confident that I'll find that which I seek: "Really Cool Things."™

All Cool Things

2011-06-26T12:42:00.007-05:00

With Indigo behind me and Juno in the distant horizon, it's time to chart a new course. It was with great interest that I read Mile's inspirational and timely blog about Indolent Programming. I immediately recognized that I definitely prefer to work on Really Cool Things. Moreover, like a bolt of lightning, I had a startling revelation: providing service and support for a ten year old framework like EMF is totally, absolutely uncool. Granted it was definitely cool to create and popularize EMF and most certainly it's great for the uncounted clients relying heavily on EMF that it be well supported, but one salient fact stands stark: service and support is at the far end of the coolness spectrum. As a result of this awakening, I nurtured my inner Teflon Programmer, and embarked on a renewed quest for coolness. Who will support EMF in my stead, you might ask. Ms. Else of course!

She's the ultimate goat, to use Mile's enlightened terminology. She actually enjoys eating her own dog food. Not only that, if you throw her the occasional bone, she's simply beside herself. This will help free up much of my time. She'll be well qualified to hit some of my simple short cut keys. For example, the first answer to any newsgroup question will be, "Did you consult with your best friend, the debugger? She's able to answer questions far faster than me." Of course Else too has a backup, Ms. Ruby!

What will I do with my new found freedom? That's for me to know and for you to find out. The only thing I'll reveal is that at this moment, number one on my list is Eclipse Demo Camp Vancouver. See you there or be uncool; the choice is always yours.

So Much to Do, So Little Time

2011-06-12T23:16:00.000-05:00

It's been ages since last I blogged. Where does all the time go? EclipseCon came and went in a whirlwind of activity. There wasn't nearly as much modeling content as in previous years and I know more than a few folks were frustrated that I rejected their talks. I didn't bother explaining that this year's selection process reduced me to tears; sometimes it's best to just clam up.

You'll probably be surprised to learn that I actually spent quite a bit of time in my evil secret lair doing cool technical work in recent months. EMF's RESTful persistence framework is heavily focused on stream-based I/O, but sometimes streams are just not what you really need. To enable greater flexibility, we've added two new interfaces to URIConverter: Loadable and Saveable. These make it easy to add a URIHandler that creates facades rather than real streams and via those facades persists a resource's contents in some arbitrary manner, i.e., in a database or some other type of structured repository. If you're interested in details about how to exploit these two new pillars, Byan Hunt blogged about MongoDB integration for EMF not so long ago.

As part of EMF's persistence flexibility enhancements, I vamped up the existing resource implementations as well. Of course they needed to detect the new stream facades in order to delegate appropriately, but more to the point, it's now also possible with a single resource implementation, i.e., XMIResourceImpl, to produce or consume binary using XMLResource.OPTION_BINARY, XML using XMIResource.OPTION_SUPPRESS_XMI, and of course XMI as usual. It's been a well hidden secret up to now, much like the new ODA support Kenn Hussey implemented!

The coolest new feature though is the improved ability to record a set of changes being made to a model and from that efficiently produce a change description that can be sent elsewhere and applied to replicate those changes. It's ironic that a feature so easy to describe is so deceptively difficult to implement. As part of its Change model EMF has long supported a ChangeRecorder that produces a ChangeDescription for this purpose. The problem is that it describes how to go from the current state back to the original state, i.e., it's a reverse delta. It's possible to call applyAndReverse to produce a forward delta, but that modifies the state of the model, i.e. , it's like undo. Of course it's also possible to call applyAndReverse as second time to redo the changes, but clearly that's not very efficient nor desirable when there's a user interface updating in response to all the changes. To address that problem, we've implemented copyAndReverse so that we can produce a serializeable forward delta without changing the state of the model itself. You might want to try it out and help stamp out any remaining bugs.

At the beginning of May I traveled to Germany for JAX and met up with a bunch of my friends for an Eclipse modeling day. The presentations and discussions were in German, so that was very tiring! Can you name all the Eclipse committers in this picture?

As part of the JAX trip to Europe, I spent some time in the Netherlands; I was born in Rijswijk and I took my mother long to visit with her family there while Frank and I stayed in Den Haag and then Amsterdam. I've never been to Amsterdam before and we happened to be there for Koninginnedag. That was quite amazing. No one can pack more boats on a small canal than the Dutch! The fact that their raft was being pushed under by the crowding boats didn't bother these guys one bit.

Not long after getting back from that, it was time for CodeGen 2011 in Cambridge where I did a keynote on the last day. That was a very interesting conference. I met lots of new people. I hope I'll be able to attend again next year. Mark Dalgarno, the conference organizer, did a great job. He even included a very memorably outing to experience punting on the Cambridge waterways.

Since then, like so many of you, I've been caught up in the final frenzied daze of Indigo. With that almost behind me, I am looking forward to a trip to Raleigh, North Carolina Monday for the Eclipse Board meeting. Speaking of which, the foundation is proposing some updates to the Eclipse Bylaws, so the committer representatives took the opportunity to propose a change to how we are elected. In particular, we looking to deliver on the one committer one vote principle. We're quite pleased about that and hope you are too.

The Universe is Unfair

2011-03-08T18:03:00.007-05:00

Fairness is a highly subjective thing. It's not simply about everyone being treated equal, it's about everyone being treated in a way that's proportional to need, merit, or some combination of the two. The universe is objectively blind to need and merit. It rains fortune and misfortune on the guilty and the innocent with equal abandon. Given that the universe is unfair, we must intervene to rectify the situation and be prepared that when we do, it will be, as Dave points out, contentious.

So it is with divvying out the Friends of Eclipse funds. Scott suggests we give up. Just kidding; I'm distorting his words by taking them out of context. What's life without a bit of humor? He actually suggests we give up centralized control. Fortunately he doesn't mean we should have a vote each and every time. We all know how contentious voting can be and how easily one can stack the vote with all your best friends. It's more likely to resemble a popularity contest than anything else.

Concretely, in 339239, Scott suggests that the individuals donating the money should make the decision. I'm not completely sure what this would entail. I think the suggestion is that the donor delegates the spending decision to a specific project's leadership, sort of like ear marking it, perhaps via a huge drop-down list of all projects. That certainly sounds very fair, at least to the donor.

Let's consider though just for a moment if donor earmarking is likely to be fair in the grand scheme of things. I hope the Aardvark project, being early in the list of choices, doesn't get most of the donations! I hope projects with poor documentation, builds, and testing get some money to help fix that. I hope projects that are used in the many other projects, but aren't apparent in the user interface, get lots of donations. In fact, I hope it's not just a few sexy projects that get the lion's share of the money. Simply put, I hope the donors will be fair. I doubt it though. I fear it will just be a case of the rich getting richer. Personally, I'd rather have people I trust to do what's fair making the decisions.

To be Fair and Balanced, That is the Question

2011-03-06T18:02:00.005-05:00

As you may or may not be aware, your committer representatives are responsible for the allocation of the Friends of Eclipse fund. There's not a lot of money and we'd like to use it in a way that promotes our community. A few people have proposed ideas. Some were accepted and some were not. We'd like to think our decision making process was fair and balanced, but that's been called into question, particularly with regard to a request for release engineering support for ECF. As a group, all the people currently running to be a committer representative agreed that using the community's limited funding to scratch the admittedly nasty itch of one specific project isn't appropriate.

To me, that seems fair and balanced, but apparently some are inclined to see it differently. Simply put, we are doing damage to small projects like ECF by saying no, we have wasted the valuable time they spent asking for money, and we generally don't represent the interests of the community. The list of things we're doing poorly is long and we're clearly bad people. It's ironic to me how often those most skilled at dishing out critique---calling Ekke an ignorant hack being another good example---are the very same ones so easily offended by another's poor choice of words. I need to keep an open mind though, so if others feel we've misjudged in our decisions, please let us know your thoughts.

Procrastination

2011-03-01T18:34:00.014-05:00

Never put off until tomorrow what you can forget about forever. After all, some problems will just go away on their own if you ignore them long enough, right?

I've been so busy these past months that a great many things have slipped through the cracks. I'm beginning to think there are more cracks than solid ground. Last I blogged I'd just traveled to Zurich for Eclipse Enterprise Modeling Day as well as to Ludwigsburg for Eclipse Summit Europe and I was living in Maple Ridge. Three months later, I'm planning a trip to Zurich for a Modeling Workshop---don't procrastinate, register immediately or miss your opportunity---as well as a trip to Santa Clara for yet another fun-filled, action-packed EclipseCon and I'm living in amazing downtown Vancouver; the Tasktop office just a five minute walk away. What happened to the house plans? A word to the wise: if you think we software engineers have trouble staying on schedule and within budget, the North American construction industry makes our industry look like a well-oiled machine. I'd rather step on a stone fish than try to design and build my own house again; it would a much quicker and far less painful death.

Don't forget, it's election time again for the Committer Representatives of the Eclipse Board of Directors. I thought fierce mudslinging might ensue while I was off gallivanting around the far east, but apparently it's turning out to be another tame campaign. While all the candidates are very good, and obviously very nice, I'm clearly by far the best because I have the prettiest underwater photographs.

Okay, that's not terribly relevant. But I do have a proven track record when it comes to braving shark-infested waters.

That's an essential skill to be sure! If you plan to vote, you have until March 11th to procrastinate.

Modeling in Europe

2010-11-08T03:15:00.006-05:00

I've been in Europe since October 27th. The trip started with a visit to Zurich to attend the Eclipse Enterprise Modeling Day hosted by UBS. It was very well organized and a great success! This was my first visit to Zurich and I was fortunate to have time for sightseeing with Frank before heading off to Ludwigsburg on October 31st. Zurich is a fantastically beautiful city!

The day before Eclipse Summit Europe, was the face-to-face Eclipse Board of Directors meeting, so the week was off to an interesting start. I was still organizing the content for the Modeling Symposium the following day. Agile preparation I like to call it though some might use the word procrastination.

I think the symposium was a great success. It was a chance for a large number of presenters to demonstrate their favorite technology in action and gave the attendees a diverse overview of many topics they might not learn about otherwise. Each presenter was kind enough to write a brief abstract, which I've included in this blog.

Semi-automated Model Transformations with Mitra and GEF3D

In OMG's "MDA Guide," model transformations are described to "be done manually, with computer assistance, or automatically." Research generally focuses on automated transformations. However, fully automated transformations can not always be applied. In this mini talk, we have a closer look at computer-assisted transformations (CATs), a language for programming them (Mitra) and, as CATs require user interactions, a 3D user interface based on GEF3D. As a result, model elements can simply be dragged from one model to another model, and when dropped these elements are automatically transformed. We demonstrate CATs by means of Jacobson's robustness analysis (known from the Rational Unified Process) and a tool for adding markers to arbitrary Ecore-based models.

Jens von Pilgrim mentioned that modeling without diagrams is like Tour de France without mountains: sure you can do it, and it's maybe even easier, but it takes out all the fun. He shows how he can drag from one diagram type to another, i.e., to transform a use case diagram into a class diagram.

Advanced Features for Migrating Models with COPE

When an Ecore model evolves, existing instances may need to be migrated. To automate the migration of these instances, COPE records the instance migration together with the Ecore model evolution in an explicit history model. The history model specifies the sequence of coupled operations that have been performed. A coupled operation encapsulates both Ecore model evolution and instance migration. Instance migration can be further automated by reusing recurring coupled operations. In this demo, we show the more advanced features of COPE to inspect and refactor the history model as well as to reverse engineer it from two versions of an Ecore model.

Markus Herrmannsdörfer demonstrated how he can use the information for transforming one Ecore model to another into a script that can transform an instance of the first model into an instance of a second model.

Modeling Eclipse Plug-in Artifacts

An Eclipse plug-in is a complex component based on heterogeneous artifacts, e.g., source code, manifest, XML files, properties files, and so on. We will demonstrate how EMF can be used to produce a homogeneous representation of these artifacts and provide a comprehensive model of an existing plug-in. We will illustrate how this model can be used to check development rules or refactor plug-ins.

It was cool to see Frédéric Madiot demonstrate how every last detailed aspect of an Eclipse plug-in is represented as Ecore-based model! He then proceeded to show all the things one can do with this information, e.g., implementing additional quality checks such as the need (for the Eclipse release process) for there to be an about.html file, as well transforming a plug-in from being Eclipse 3.x-based to e4-based.

Only One Click to an EMF Application

We will demonstrate how to develop an example application with the EMF Client Platform and EMFStore. A developer only needs to define an Ecore model for the application´s entities. Based on the EMF Client Platform this already defines a basic User Interface for editing. EMFStore allows storing and distributing the instances of the model. Everything just with the click of a button, that is launching an Eclipse instance with the model plug-in.

Jonas Helming and Maximilian Koegel did three quick demos. The first showed how one can rapidly prototype model designs and test their capabilities with a high-quality editor, i.e., one with forms for editing properties. The next showed the CVS-like ability of their model repository. And finally they showed how they can integrate their repository-approach with SVN.

The CDO Model Repository – Being Connected and Unconnected

In addition to the traditional connected mode, the Helios version of CDO comes with a sophisticated offline mode that has been inspired by distributed versioning systems like Git and is almost transparent for end user applications. If you feel uncomfortable with replicating the entire history of all branches of your master repository you may be interested in this demo. We’ll present the brand new offline workspace facility, which provides you with a more CVS/SVN-like workflow: checkout, update, commit. In combination with our new EFS implementation you can seamlessly integrate your CDO-managed object graphs with any existing Eclipse technology that is based on IFiles, while still being able to access the underlying object graphs.

One of the coolest things Eike Stepper shows is the integration with the Eclipse File System where the repository contents are surfaced as IResources.

Papyrus in Action

We will introduce the Papyrus team during the session, and we will then present the MDT Papyrus project itself. The talk will focus on the UML2 abilities of the tool, full compliance towards UML2 specification, and Domain Specific Modeling Language development facilities using UML2 profiles. We will also demonstrate the various possibilities of tool customization and finally we will present the road map for the next releases.

Remi Schnekenburger and Patrick Tessier showed some of the Papyrus capabilities, such as customizing the diagrams based on stereotype application.

Acceleo on e4

During this presentation, you will see a prototype of the modeling project Acceleo on the e4 platform. That presentation will also give you the opportunity to hear the feedback of this experimental transition to e4 with its advantages and drawbacks.

Stephane Begaudeau showed some of Acceleo's nice integration features, such as its own perspective with views that show things like all the objects accessed when generating a particular artifact; an important traceability feature.

Reconciling Multiple Representations for BPMN 2.0.

The new BPMN 2.0 standard provides a good basis for interoperability between Process Modeling tools and engines from different vendors. An EMF metamodel allows one to read and write standard compliant files and offers a good API for all kinds of tools. Such a metamodel was committed to Eclipse MDT project. However it was not as simple to create as you might have thought: Unfortunately OMG defines both, a CMOF metamodel and an XML Schema, resulting in two official file formats that such an implementation must consider. Fortunately EMF provides a solution for almost everything. I’ll demo how you can merge the two sources, the EMF tricks that were used, and how finally the BPMN implementation works.

Reiner Hille-Doering talked about the incompatibilities between CMOF, with multi-inheritance and typed references verses XML Schema which single inheritance and untyped reference. The difference between these two ways of defining the model needs to be reconciled to produce a single model capable of reading and writing the exchange format implied by each definition. Because it's a large model, he defined an automated way of merging the two to produce a single result annotated with extended metadata.

Dynamic Domain Models for JUnit using EMF, redView and Xtext

Implementing unit tests for business applications means running the same test classes again and again with different inputs and expected outputs. This session should demo, how EMF, redView and Xtext can be used to create reusable test instances which can be configured by dynamic domain models.

Xtext defines the test case specific domain model
redView renders and binds a matching ui at runtime
EMF stores the information in a key-value-map

Florian Pirchner showed how they can use model changes to dynamically update JDT's AST to reflect those changes.

Bonita Open Solution: Leveraging Modeling Power for Customization

We will see how the BonitaSoft team leveraged power of Modeling to turn a simple RCP-based modeler into a highly customized and user-friendly application. I will talk about some GMF-based customization in Bonita Open Solution Studio, and show how this customization is done with repeatable code generation to ensure agility and maintainability.

Aurelien Pupier showed two of their GMF-based editors. Their editors have nice contextual palette that make creating models very easy. They've done a good job making a stylish application.

Typesystems for Xtext Languages

Ever wondered about how to efficiently write the constraints for checking the correctness of non-trivial typing rules in Xtext languages? This short talk introduces the Xtext Typesystem framework which supports the declarative definition of a wide range of typing rules for Xtext languages. I will show a few slides to explain the background and how it works, and then I'll demo how to integrate a typesystem with an actual Xtext language editor.

Markus Völter showed a grammar for a simple expression language and proceeded to demonstrate how a simple type system can be constructed from that. E.g., define the types of the literals (i.e., of the leaf expressions) and then the rules for deriving the type of composite expressions.

Modeling Meets JDT: Leverage Java Types in Your Models

A tight integration with the Java Types and the Java Development Tools (JDT) is a sweet spot especially, but not only, for textual modeling. That's why we developed a lightweight EMF representation of the Java VM types, their operations, and fields as part of the Xtext framework. In this short demo I'll show how we used the abstractions of EMF and the power of dependency injection by means of Google Guice to allow a seamless integration of modeling components with Java VM types. Especially interesting is the dedicated EMF resource implementation that allows clients to work transparently with the Java reflection layer or the available information from a JDT based Eclipse Java project. Furthermore, I'll give a short demo on how the Modeling Workflow Engine (MWE) leverages this feature to provide a highly extensible configuration language including advanced tool support for users.

Sebastian Zarnekow started with a simple DSL to show how, with the use of the JVM type model, it's possible to refer to Java classes. It seamless derives its information either from JDT or via Java reflection, depending on your environment context. Very cool and powerful stuff.

Xdoc - When Writing Documentation is Fun

Xtext comes with extensive documentation published as Eclipse Help, as HTML on our website as well as PDF for printing and offline reading. The documentation is written in Xdoc, a markup language tailored for the purpose of writing documentation for Eclipse projects. This is a short demo of Xdoc and its editing features.

One of the things Sven Efftinge requested is for folks to post information on 328477 about their use of Xtext. He then proceeded to demonstrate the capabilities of Xdoc, a DSL similar to wiki and TeX for writing documentation, with a simple example document.

Diagram views of Xtext Grammars (5 minutes)

The Xtext Syntax View visualizes the syntax of your Xtext language in a railroad diagram. It helps to analyze, debug, and document your Xtext based languages.

Jan Köhnlein's very quick demonstration of his railroad diagram pet project was very cool, so much so that I neglected to get his picture! So I took his snapshot during the beer and pretzel reception right after.

Eclipse Modeling Platform

The Eclipse Modeling Platform (EMP) is an industrial quality integrated software platform to enable complete chains of model-centric tools in organizations focused on model driven development. The requirements for EMP are being set by some of the largest companies using model driven development. EMP will be developed as an Eclipse Industry Working Group supporting a collection of open source projects and encouraging a commercial ecosystem of value-added tools and services. The platform will be based on existing Eclipse modeling technologies but focus on better integration, quality, scalability and usability for modeling professionals.

This talk will give an insight into what is being done in the Modeling Platform Industry Working Group (MPIWG) and who is collaborating in this forum. It will also reflect the relation of the EMP to the existing Eclipse modeling projects and explain why these are promising days for getting this started.

Stephan Eberle gave much the same talk as he did a the Eclipse Modeling Day in Zurich last week.

The rest of the conference, as expected, was fantastic as well. I didn't get to attend all the talks I would have liked to attend, but face-to-face time is one of the primary reasons for traveling to these types of events, so it often takes priority. As with all good things, it came to an end all too quickly.

Friday November 5th, the day after the conference, was a face-to-face meeting of the Modeling Platform Industrial Working Group. It was held at the conference center. Stephan Eberle and Martin Mandischer have been doing a fantastic job gathering requirements, analyzing the gaps that need attention, and outlining a plan for making it happen. Things are progressing well.

No trip to Germany is complete without a stop in Berlin, so that's where I headed Friday night to meet up with Frank, who had been there all that week. We even had a chance to visit Dresden on Sunday. Neither pictures nor words can do that city justice!

Today is our last full day in Germany before heading home to Vancouver tomorrow. It's been a great trip and I'm sure we'll be back soon.

Eclipse Modeling: A Smith for the Cloud

2010-10-04T08:13:00.005-05:00

Google Web Toolkit is cool. In combination with App Engine and Google Plugin for Eclipse, it facilitates the rapid development of applications that run in the cloud. It exploits a familiar language, i.e., Java, as well as familiar tools, i.e., Eclipse's Java Development Tools. As such, you can reuse a great deal of existing expertise. There's even a project wizard to get you up and running quickly.

Unfortunately, Google Plugin’s project wizard produces merely a "hello world" type application, so there remains a great deal to learn before you can do anything truly interesting following best practices. Now, where Google Plugin’s tools trail off, EMF's tools kick in. Starting with a simple description of your data structures, you can generate a fully functional application focused specifically on your domain of interest. My demo at Google’s Eclipse Day last month showed this in action. Now, with the help of my colleagues at Cloudsmith, we have everything nicely packaged up so you can easily try it at home. It’s all documented in the EMF for GWT wiki. Prepare to soar into the clouds.

Of course those of you familiar with Eclipse modeling know that EMF produces simple natural APIs of hand written quality in which complex relationships are simply expressed. But those of you more familiar with GWT and App Engine, and with technologies like Roo, will likely expect to be dealing with Data Transfer Objects that describe denormalized models which are mapped via JPA onto App Engine Datastore’s entity-based back-end. It’s tedious, painful and stilted, not to mention totally unnecessary. Just say no to DTO. With EMF, you can focus on the creative task of describing your domain, rather than on the tedious task of mapping high level concepts onto low-level persistence technologies, and you can exploit REST to its fullest. EMF is truly a smith for the cloud.

A Fine Demonstration

2010-09-27T05:45:00.006-05:00

I'm in Germany once again. Frank had his immigration interview at the Canadian Embassy in Berlin last week, so I came along. I'm glad that the flight to Germany from Vancouver isn't all that much longer than the flight from Toronto: only about 2 hours more.

The other day I went to the New Palace in Potsdam; it's one of the finest demonstrations of German culture, art, and craftsmanship I've every seen, and I've seen quite a bit this past year and a half!

Demonstrations of craftsmanship is exactly what we want for the Modeling Symposium at Eclipse Summit Europe next month. If you have something cool, new, and interesting you'd like to show in action, please contact me as soon as possible at ed dot merks at gmail dot com.

As a general reminder, I'd suggest to register for ESE immediately; keep in mind too that the Nestor hotel runs out of rooms, so book now or plan for long walks. I'm really looking forward to my next trip to Europe. It will include not only Ludwigsburg and Berlin, but also a side trip to Zurich for Eclipse Enterprise Modeling Day. If you're interested in that, please register. Meanwhile, I'm plodding away with the EMF for GWT infrastructure to enable those interested to play with it at home. Stay tuned for fruits of that labor. Come to ESE to see it in live!

Taking to the Clouds

2010-08-25T10:08:00.003-05:00

I've been working hard these past weeks in my evil secret lair. Well, maybe not so secret, given that the results are, in true open source fashion, open: 323050. But it's definitely evil: among my tasks this week has been rejecting 6 out of every 7 Eclipse Summit Europe modeling submissions. I'm sure no one will take it personally and I'll remain ever so popular. Not! In any case, I'm taking to the clouds today!

That's right, I'm headed for Google's headquarters, with my brand new passport anxiously awaiting its first stamp of approval. (Did you know that a trip through the washing machine will launder all evidence of ever having been to the states?) It's Eclipse Day at the Googleplex where I'll be unveiling my master plan: world domination for Eclipse Modeling. Resistance is futile. Expect to be assimilated soon.

Looking Ahead, There's No Turning Back

2010-07-26T11:00:00.009-05:00

Time moves in but one direction, forward, so it's generally best spent looking ahead. It helps avoid hitting obstacles, something in which our girls take a personal interest.

Subjectively it moves slowly or quickly, but rarely slowly or quickly enough. With our move to Vancouver and the Helios release quickly receding into the past, there's definitely no turning back. One thing I can say for certain, neither pictures nor words can fully reflect the beauty that is British Columbia.

Did you know that the Helios release included 26 modeling projects? That's one for every letter of the alphabet! How many will be in Indigo? Time will tell. Modeling is most certainly an exciting place to get involved. Not quite as as exciting as wake boarding, mind you; yes, that's really me on the board!

Speaking of excitement and getting involved, our next main event is Eclipse Summit Modeling, err, I mean Europe. With all the excellent modeling content, it's all too easy to get the names confused. I'm a little torn on how to split the slots between tutorials and symposia; we have two half day slots. Probably it will be best to have a half day tutorial and a half day symposium. Given we can have only one tutorial, I'd like one that covers a broad range of technologies in a cohesive way, so I'm going to try to force people to work together on that. I'd also like a symposium that's more interesting than the one I organized last year, i.e., more discussion, less lecturing, more demos, fewer slides. Action packed is the goal. Oh well, that's my problem. Your problem is to get something submitted as soon as possible; the deadline is August 16th---no you can't wait until September---and the early bird contest deadline is August 2nd---only days away! Hurry, time waits for no one.

Looking ahead further, I'm a little concerned about the future of the Ecore Tools project. We had to give it a transfusion of life blood, Kenn's, Cedric's and my own, just to get it built for Helios, but it really needs some active committers for Indigo. Interested? It's a fairly big challenge to tackle, though not as big as this "stick" Else is trying drag out of the water. She's too ambitious to notice it's more of a log really. Not only that, the boat itself is tied to it.

Looking ahead on the personal front, I've been working hard on my own secret project: generating a GWT application that exploits App Engine. I suppose it's not really a secret given that I'm publicized to present this topic at the Modeling Day at Googleplex 2010, err, I mean the Eclipse Day... I'm making excellent progress. I'll be able to share the details when the gem is a little less rough. It's so very nice to be doing some really solid technical work for a change.

Patently Ridiculous

2010-05-07T02:15:00.002-05:00

Imagine you had an existing Java data model---a plain old one not based on EMF---that you wanted to map to an EMF model so you could take advantage of all of EMF's cool features. If your data model were a simple bean-style model, you could easily induce an Ecore model from its API; after all, that's what EMF's @model annotations do. You could then easily map instances of the plain old Java model to instances of your EMF model, perhaps using Java reflection, bringing together the old and the new.

What an exciting and innovative idea, you would exclaim to yourself, and to those around you, as you jumped for joy, reveling in your own brilliance.

Sorry to disappoint you, but don't bother. IBM has patented that: 7506303. The lesson learned? Just because something is simple and obvious doesn't mean you can't patent it. So run, don't walk, to your nearest patent lawyer, turn your obvious ideas into incomprehensible legal babel, file a claim, and then sue someone's assets right off their balance sheet, perhaps with the help of a patent troll. Surely such patented ridiculousness serves primarily to suck the lifeblood of the software sector much like collateralized debt objects did the vital stuff of the financial sector.

Change Begets Change

2010-04-30T05:41:00.010-05:00

Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast. I've not blogged in a couple of months amid the whirlwind of change that has become my life. I often feel more than a little in over my head these days.

Change is inevitable so best to embrace it, make it work in your favor. That being said, it's important to choose the path forward carefully, and the company you keep, wisely. It's all too easy to make a wrong turn or to pick up bad habits. Can you say gambling?

My life was on a very steady course up until the time I left IBM. That particular radical change was the beginning of many to follow; it was voluntary and good even in hindsight. But it was carefully planned like the rest of my life. The demise of my partner of 27 years, on the other hand, was untimely, arbitrary, and beyond my control. Such things make one reconsider life's carefully laid plans. It's clear that time is fleeting and that one must make the most of today because there is no guarantee for tomorrow. Workaholic Ed died and the phoenix that rose from his ashes took a really good look around. Guess what? There really is time for me to swim 2km every weekday morning. Go figure!

Looking around a little further, I discovered that I have the greatest neighbors in the world. Okay, granted Warren is a bit of a princess.

So's Linda come to think of it.

But they've helped me more in the last year and a half than one could reasonably expect from another human being. For example, they've looked after my girls for countless weeks whenever I traveled; the girls love it next door. Last week, they even threw a birthday party for Else, the most recent addition to my dog collection.

Most important of all, they've helped make my Frank feel more than a little welcome in his new home in Canada.

Warren and Linda are the epitome of what it means to be good friends and I consider myself fortunate for having them in my life.

Looking around further still at what's happening with modeling at Eclipse and beyond is also eye opening the the extreme. Talk about change that begets change! I'm more than a little gratified and relieved to see that it's taken on such vibrant life of its own. I don't need to obsess quite as much about driving the vision of modeling forward. There are so many others who do that job even better. I've learned an important lesson: don't push the river, it follows by itself! As Kim so aptly put it: Eclipse is like family. What a great family and what a great place to be. Thanks Cloudsmith and itemis for helping make it economically viable for me and for all their other great contributions to the Eclipse community.

Speaking of great places to be, it struck me a few months back that I'd much rather live back in British Columbia. I grew up there. My parents, brother, and sister live there. I like the weather better there. I can grow a more interesting garden there. Frank and I can build a new life together from scratch there. I only moved to Ontario for IBM. So I bought a great property with this view.

My house is already sold, I've got a rental house lined up, and I've scheduled my move for the end of May. Of course there are more changes yet to come.

I write this blog today from Berlin, in summer like weather, as I anticipate traveling to JAX in Mainz next week where there's an Eclipse day and a Modeling day. Could life get any more interesting and exciting?

Oh yes, and it turned out workaholic Ed didn't really die, he was merely transformed into a more well-rounded version of his former self. I've spend the past several weeks porting the core EMF runtime to GWT and modifying the generator to produce GWT-enabled models and edit support on top of that runtime. It's all committed to CVS in time for M7, but I've not had time for documentation yet. Modeling in the clouds; stay tuned for yet more change.

How Active is Your Committer Representative?

2010-02-08T21:21:00.000-05:00

Now that we're in the middle of an exciting Eclipse board of directors election campaign, you're probably asking yourself, how will I decide for whom to vote? You might well be swayed by folks like Bjorn who are actively campaigning; Bjorn's always got interesting new ideas. Then again, you might prefer Boris' more subtle approach of simply encouraging you to vote; I like that approach a lot! Or you might like Chris' approach of tirelessly and visibly helping to promote our community; how can you not like Chris for that? On the other hand, Doug's more edgy approach could well be just your thing; he's always thought provoking. Clearly it helps to be visible, so I'd better not be too quiet if I want another opportunity to be on the board; I doubt that simply looking pretty in pink will help...

One thing you might consider is how actively involved are the candidates. Here are some statistics about project involvement.

Most of the candidates are quite involved. There are of course a multitude of statistics one might consider, e.g., number of commits. For that you could compare the dash statistics for caniszczyk, bbokowski, dschaefer, bfreeman, and emerks. Great, just what I needed: a sad, ugly reminder of how unproductive my 2009 was; at least 2010 is off to a better start, both personally and professionally. Check out this lovely one-of-a-kind Kim Horne original water color that I recently had framed to hang in my office as a beautiful reminder of the diversity and creativity of our community.

In the end, the choice of representative is necessarily subjective. I'm sure folks will choose wisely based on who most closely represents their own point of view as well as who is most likely to make effective positive contributions. Having seen Chris and Boris in action first hand, I can definitely recommend them for their experience and for having represented the commiters well.

Peripatetic

2010-01-25T05:33:00.011-05:00

It was bound to happen: I was finally asked to be a model. I kid you not. The truth is stranger than fiction. It happened at Upper Canada Mall. Leaving a store that sells leather jackets, I was interrupted by a plaintiff "Excuse me sir, would you mind helping us out for a second." It turned out I was just the right build to act as a model for the lady's husband; she and two other ladies were picking a jacket for him. Being incredibly helpful and generally unable to say no, of course I obliged, volunteering my own opinion on which jacket fit best. All the while, visions of an easy life on the Paris runway just standing and modeling flashed before my eyes. But then I started to feel just like a piece of meat and I decided to keep my regular day job where looking pretty isn't all that important.

Life continues to be far too busy. It's pretty much impossible to balance my personal life with all the other demands on my time. I'm writing this post today from Berlin which is in the grip of a frigid winter not unlike the kind one normally expects in Toronto, so I feel right at home. Last weekend I was in Vancouver getting married. Tomorrow I head over to Munich where Peter and I present at OOP 2010; no, I will not be presenting in German though my German is definitely improving, something one might expect when you marry a German. The more German I learn---I can almost follow a conversation now---the more frustrated I am with not knowing more. This coming Thursday Ralph has arranged another Eclipse Stammtisch so I plan to attend that; I'm sure much German will be spoken. Maybe I'll see you there. I just hope it's not so cold.

I don't head back home to Toronto until February 2nd, but I expect to be back in Berlin yet again for the Modeling Code Camp at the beginning of March. Itemis does trainings like this as well. It's unfortunate that more people don't take advantage of the opportunity to get a jump start on exploiting open source technology. It might seem cheaper to muddle through on your own but suboptimal design decisions are likely a much bigger hidden cost down the road. EclipseCon will be yet another cost effective opportunity to learn new things, and yet another reason to travel. There will certainly be a great deal of modeling content. Too bad we couldn't accept more submissions. After EclipseCon I expect a short break in the travel schedule before I head over to Germany yet again for the JAX conference in Mainz. Maybe I should just move to Germany to save all the travel time.

On the Balance

2010-01-01T13:05:00.007-05:00

The new year is a time to reflect on how life is unfolding, to chart an effective course forward. Those who are wise consider carefully all the things for which to be grateful so that all the ways in which life inevitably short changes them loom less large. They temper their drive to satisfy their own personal needs and desires with consideration for their impact on the world around them. Life is a balancing act without a simple, obvious, optional strategy. Of course it's better to give than to receive, but only a fool gives to the greedy; something particularly germane in an open source community.

The wise avoid spending in inordinate amount of time focused on all the things around them that might be changed for the better because most of those things are beyond their control, not to mention the fact that "Better for whom?" is not always entirely clear. Instead they focus primarily on the very small number of things upon which they can personally have the most significant impact, always keeping in mind that the easiest things to change, and the biggest source of problems, are themselves.

For me personally, 2009 has been in part an extremely bad year; I've had to learn some painful lessons. Life is short, don't waste precious minute of it. Unfortunately everyone has to learn this lesson their own hard way, based on direct personal experience. I generally did my job poorly, or more positively stated, there's much room for improvement. I'm most grateful to itemis and Cloudsmith for their generous funding of my work and to my family, friends, and the Eclipse community for their support. All things considered, 2009 has also been an extremely good year; I've learned some my lessons exceedingly well and most importantly I've found the one thing I want most of all. On the balance, life is only as bad as you choose to perceive it and only as good as you take action to make it. Let's make 2010 an excellent year!

That Totally Sucks You Big Loser

2009-12-01T10:33:00.007-05:00

Suppose you went for dinner at someone's house and they served excellent wine, a fantastic main course, a scrumptious dessert, and a salad that made you want to gag. What would you do?

Compliment them on all the good things, overlooking the one bad thing.
Explain that the salad literally sickened you, carefully detailing exactly what was so awful about it.
Something between these two extremes.

Keep in mind that the blue cheese salad dressing might very well be fine quality; the real problem might be that the taste and smell of rotted milk just isn't your thing, i.e., the problem might be subjective, not objective.

It seems human nature to find fault with the world around us. It's not even bad thing. After all, how can one improve anything without constructive ideas for making them better? One must counter that with the fact that it's also human nature to take offense easily to anything that isn't entirely flattering. We generally prefer to hear mostly compliments, especially given the fact that we're getting asymptotically closer to the perfection for which we strive. That's why as children we're taught: if you can't say something nice don't say anything at all. Clearly that's a little too black and white, but that's yet another human failing: to over simplify problems and then come up with simplistic solutions to those. One thing to keep in mind in this drive to achieve perfection through criticism is that focusing on positives, or at least noticing them, generally makes one feel better, e.g., I noticed how lovely these maple trees looked and therefore spent much less time noticing that the wild pigs of Berlin had destroyed the lawn around it.

Given we're all so perfect, of course it's a virtue that we should speak our mind whenever a thought enters it. Every criticism we dish out should be seen as clear evidence of our drive for ultimate perfection. The sharper the critique, the more evident is our keen intellectual perceptiveness. Any mature adult ought to see our commentary as the good kind of criticism, i.e., the constructive kind. Those who do not are, well, over-sensitive, short-sighted losers to be perfectly blunt. With folks like that, one might as well waste time explaining to this water plant that the underwater lily bees aren't about to show up to pollinate it.

Personally I'm more than a little fed up with people complaining about the salad; it tends to ruin the dinner party for the host, and even the other guests who don't share the subjective distaste. It's especially disturbing when the host shrieks back a retort about the gawd awful choice of the complainer's dinner wear. One always has to wonder if the complainers could throw a dinner party or their own, especially given their lack of social graces. I'd suggest they think more carefully about the impact of their criticism before dishing it out. Is it actually valid critique to begin with, or is blue cheese simply not their thing? Most important of all, what good will come from the criticism? Is there perhaps a nicer, more effective way to achieve that goal with an approach that doesn't sound so critical? Sharing your favorite salad dressing recipes without a single word of criticism is probably an approach close to optimal.

Modeling Daze

2009-11-23T09:44:00.005-05:00

The Modeling Days have left me in a bit of a daze so I'm way behind with my blogging. The New York Eclipse Modeling Day was hosted by Credit Suisse in the smaller building next to their main tower across from Madison Garden.

Ian Skerret started the day with a quick introduction followed by Joe Wood of Credit Suisse who talked about how modeling is rapidly becoming a central aspect of Credit Suisse's information technology infrastructure. They're very focused on industry standards to help facilitate integration across organizations. Following those quick introductions, I did my stupid modeling talk.

After the morning break, Richard Wood of Credit Suisse presented a case study on model transformation. They're using oAW and EMF. He talked about Gobal Services as Enterprise Java Beans for which service interface definitions were specified as UML class models. It was a quick and dirty solution with the drawback that the UML API was complex to use and hence the templates were difficult to maintain. Using a specialized model to express web services helped simplify the transformation process of producing WSDLs and XSDs. In other projects they used profiled UML to describe the different design layers of a large project, i.e., the presentation layer and the business data layer, which they mapped onto a specialized DSL and from that generated the parts of the application. He also talked about generating a profiled UML instance from a model and talked about some of the lessons learned. The requirements for the model that are needed for generating is often different from the original high level model, so using transformation to produce the more specialized form can help simplify the design. He suggests to avoid generating directly from UML because it's too complex and that complexity obscures the logic of the templates to make them unreadable and unmaintainable. He feels that static content in templates needs to be independently maintained. He also advises to reuse existing technology whenever possible, e.g, the oAW XMLWriter. One of the questions afterward was about why UML was being used at all; the primary reason given was that UML is simply a standard requirement for which there is existing experience and tools.

After lunch, Bjorn Freeman-Benson, Miles Daffin of Morgan Stanely, and I did our b3 talk. It went pretty well I think. The b3 project completed its creation review just last week, so we're off to the races! Our talk was followed by Eike's CDO talk where he explained many of the same things I've seen at the Munich code camp and at ESE, so it's starting to sound simple and familiar.

Moritz's talk about combining graphical and textual views followed the final break. He focused on some of the qualities of good textual notations, e.g., readability and writability, as well as the tooling aspects that further facilitate these aspects, e.g., syntax highlighting and content assist. Then he compared different aspects of textual and graphical notations, e.g., text tends to be presented in its entirety whereas graphics tends to hide much of the model in properties not directly visible.

The day finished with a closing panel where the panel asked the audience questions to stimulate more two-way interaction. All in all, it was a very fun day. One of the ladies I chatted with remarked how great it was to be able to attend a free mini-conference like this. "Usually something like this costs a lot of many," she remarked. Soon it was time to say goodbye to the bright lights of New York.

The Toronto modeling day was fun as well. It follow much the same format and included mostly the same content. IBM's facilities were very nice, but they asked us not to use cameras. It was especially nice to see some familiar faces. I did my stupid modeling talk yet again; people always seem to like it so that's rather gratifying. My build talk was after the break, so basically I talked the whole morning and was very tired after that. Following lunch I attended the MDE talk as well as Mile's AMP talk. Both were very interesting.

I think the Toronto day went even better than the New York; folks seemed more inclined to interact with each other. That same evening there was a demo camp as well, so we had even more opportunities to chat and mingle. If I wasn't so darned tired, I'd have taken a few pictures. With all the excitement behind me, Frank and I were able to focus on setting up this year's festival of lights.

We refuse to be outdone by our neighbors, not that we're competitive or anything.

Do It Better With A Model

2009-11-09T06:35:00.004-05:00

Has the spark of excitement in your life slowly dwindled? Do you suffer from performance anxiety? Are you concerned that you won't be able to fully satisfy Helios? Fear not for you are not alone! Fortunately for you, we have a new drug free solution. Forget about all those ads for pills and mechanical devices filling up your spam folder. We have discovered that real live models bring a whole new perspective.

Our carefully selected models aren't merely super, they're versatile and flexible enough to satisfy your every need. Just relax and let them do their thing. Of course if you feel so inclined, you can take control anytime the urge arises. If you aren't yet fully convinced that our stimulating models are exactly what you need, have a look at this testimonial from one our many completely satisfied customers. He's clearly taken aim and hit the mark, and he's not alone.

Best of all, our models aren't merely good for builds, they're good for development in general. Whether you like to do it top down, bottom up, or some other way we've not yet imagined, our models will be there to help you feel like the real developer you've always wanted to be. Your imagination is the only limitation, so take a bit of time to dream of the many exciting things our models might do for you do today. The e4 team has, and now there's no holding them back. Just keep in mind that no problem is too small or too big for our models. After all, I doubt this grand palace was built without the aid of a model.

We're so fully convinced that our models are world class, we've scheduled free modelings days in two of North America's great cities: New York and Toronto. Register immediately for these exclusive events before time runs out! You'll spend a fun filled day learning about b3, Xtext, CDO, AMP, Papyrus, and SAP's exciting new query technology from some of the world's leading experts as well as discovering how these technologies have been effectively exploited. Not only that, all four authors of the EMF book are expected to be at the Toronto event, so bring your books to be signed. At the end of the day, I'm sure you'll agree: it's simply more exciting to do it with models.

Eclipse Summit Europe 2009: The Final Day

2009-10-30T00:35:00.012-05:00

The day started with Tony Ballenti's keynote about the dynamics of open source.

He explored the various reasons why organizations get involved in open source and how that motivation matures over time.

As with all things in life, investing more effort generally generates more reward, or at least the potential for that. Nevertheless, many if not most are quite comfortable investing very little while still reaping significant rewards. Tony spent a lot of time talking about ecosystems with these takeaways.

From a modeling perspective, we've gained a great deal of value from innovative individuals including many researchers. In addition, a significant number of companies have grown in this space and are investing heavily in it, which is very good if you consider where we'd be if we still relied primarily on the two large organizations that kicked off this venture.

After the break, during which I talked with Bernd, Boris, and Kai about using Xtext to specify a CSS subset for e4 styling, was Kenn Hussey, Raphael Faudou, and Patrick Tessier's Papayrus talk.

The room was way overcrowded and there just wasn't enough air. They outlined the history of the project, i.e., they started as a number of separate external UML tool efforts. These efforts merged under the Papyrus 2 umbrella which is now producing some very slick looking technology. Kenn described the "perfect storm" that's bringing things together.

The project aims to separate out a DSL backbone that can be reused with other models such as SysML, BPMN2, and so on. Stay tuned for other developments in the area of a common DSL workbench...

Markus Herrmannsdoerfer's COPE talk was in the same room and it was even more crowded, so much so that people just couldn't fit in the room anymore.

I assume many people have data that needs to be migrated as their models change. Go figure. The idea behind Cope is to track the changes made to the Ecore model and then apply those same operations to the actual instance data. He demonstrated how it really works with a simple state machine model.

Hajo Eichler's Model Execution Framework talk was also in the same room.

Thank goodness someone figured out how to open a window or I'd have died by now. He did a bit of slide "borrowing" for his talk; Eike and I made it clear intend to send the license police after him. Quickly thereafter, you could hear the police sirens out in the street, and he looked worried. He showed how he extended the Ecore model to be able to express behavior using a subset of UML activities. There's an intepretter to execute the model as well as a debugger for interactively tracking the execution process. It looks very promising.

After that was lunch, during which Thomas, Henrik and I talked with Wayne about how we can help with aggregating p2 repositories for Helios and for projects not on the release train. Unfortunately, I missed all the afternoon sessions dealing with modeling project management issues. If I told you about them, I'd have to kill you. I really wanted to see EuGENia;I heard from others that it was really cool. I also wanted to see the progress that was made on EEF. It was a bit of a bummer to miss all the interesting sessions that afternoon. There should be more time for chatting at these conferences...

By late afternoon, word had gotten out that it was my birthday. During the closing session, Ralph incited the entire audience to sing happy birthday for me. How embarrassing is that? According to German custom, I should have bought cake for everyone and invited them all to a party. Sorry dudes, I can't afford that much cake. As expected, ESE just keeps getting better each year and I look forward to next year.

Eclipse Summit Europe 2009: A Day of Talks

2009-10-29T00:48:00.008-05:00

The morning started with the keynote about functional programming by Don Syme of Microsoft.

I loved functional programming back in my university days, which seems like so many eons ago. He argues that certain classes of problem are far simpler to solve using functional programming and shows a number of examples where F#'s syntax is far simpler, i.e., less verbose, than C#. Personally though, I'm not one who easily buys into the idea that syntactic conciseness in and of itself makes a language significantly better. Simplicity of the underlying semantic/mental model is ultimately what counts, and that of course needs to be balanced against expressiveness power, which generally is the counter point to simplicity. F# definitely looks powerful.

The break was an opportunity for many interesting discussions. One of the great things about conferences is the face to face discussions they facilitate. The summit is particularly conducive to that type of interation. Unfortunately that resulted in missing the start of the e4 talk. The diverse e4 team has made a lot of progress.

After another yummy lunch I was torn between Sven's Xtext talk and Tom's e4 model talk. Two cool things at once. Darn! I know more about Xtext than the e4 model, so I opted for the latter. It was interesting hearing all Tom's reasons for using EMF in e4.

He showed how a simple application model specifies the logical structure of the user interface, eliminating the need to build up these structures with a pile of boilerplate Java code. Then he showed how to extend that base scaffolding with embedded parts. He even showed an example where one process is editing an e4 model stored in a CDO repository while another process is rendering that same model from the shared repository in the actual UI; changes are immediately reflected across the process boundary effecitvely giving you a WYSIWYG editor. He also explained how you can define your own renderer to display the same model in various different ways. It's looking very good!

After that I attended Bernd Kolb and Christian Mohr's query talk.

Bernd explained some of the shortcomings of the existing EMF query technology; it's definitely pretty crude. SAP had some existing query infrastructure that was part of their proprietary MOF implementation; that's what's being contributed to Eclipse. They demonstrated examples of the cool SQL-like query language they support. The query execution engine makes use of the EMF index project, but can work against in memory resources as well as directly against a database too.

Frederic Jouault and Hugo Bruneliere's EMF Oslo talk was next.

They explained that M consistst of three complementary languages: MSchema, MGraph, and MGrammer, analogous to Ecore, EObject, and Xtext. Bridging these technologies involves mapping these specific concepts. To start one could define an Ecore model for MSchema so that it's possible to transform Ecore instances to MSchema instances which could then be serialized to conform of the MSchema textual syntax. They demonstrate their progress toward implementing this approach including ATL transformations for doing the mapping.

Henrik Lindberg and Thomas Hallgren's b3 talk followed a short break.

One might summarize the approach as model driven builds. Key aspects of the build and provisioning process are captured as declarative models, e.g., buildable units which are analogous to p2's installable units, and these ultimately drive the build process. Xtext is being used to provide human readable syntax for the build models. There's a lot of cool stuff planned! If you're working on an Eclipse project, you're probably painfully aware of how much of a nightmare it currently is to set up and maintain your builds. Goodness forbid someone changes the requirements for what needs to be pumped out at the end!

After that I had a chance to chat with a guy hoping to get involved in GEF, a project that certainly needs some fresh and lively committers. Maybe I'll be able to help. This was followed by the Buckminster talk from Henrik, Thomas, and Filip Hrbek.

It attracted a very large audience.

Henrik explained that provisioning a workspace or building a p2 repository ought to be as simple as ordering your favorite burger at your burger outlet of choice.

Filip and Thomas demonstrated that it's as simple as specifying a query to locate the root feature and asking for its p2 repository to be built.

The tools, e.g., the dependency visualizer, are looking very slick. They also demonstrated the repository aggregator, which is based on an EMF model and an EMF generated editor. It can even produce a Maven repository as well as a p2 repository. How cool is that? At the end they explained how the lessons learned from building Buckminster will be used to drive further improvements into the b3 project. Models, models, everywhere.

This was followed by the reception. It included a talk by Microsoft that felt a little too much like advertisement to me. Oh well, they paid for the the food and the spirits---the salmon was excellent and so was the wine---so it was a reasonable trade-off. I finished the day at a birds of a feather session discussing how to transform the modeling project into something suited for supporting a DSL workbench as well as how interested consumers could help fund that effort. It was a very interesting day indeed!