GMT News
GMT is welcoming a new component: TCS.
TCS (Textual Concrete Syntax) is an Eclipse/GMT component that enables the specification of textual concrete syntaxes for Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) by attaching syntactic information to metamodels. With TCS, it is possible to parse (text-to-model) and pretty-print (model-to-text) DSL sentences. Moreover, TCS provides an Eclipse editor, which features: syntax highlighting, an outline, hyperlinks, and hovers for every DSL which syntax is represented in TCS.
More details are available here: http://www.eclipse.org/gmt/tcs/about.php.
GMT is welcoming a new component: Open Model CourseWare.
Open Model CourseWare aims to provide a set of teaching and learning artifacts to the modeling community. The Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) approach suggests using transformational and generative techniques to produce running systems from very abstract models. MDE is still in its infancy and will probably much evolve in the coming years: as a consequence, the approach has yet to be made popular. This is why it is interesting to provide several levels of access to the corresponding courseware. Following the model courseware that was initially contributed to the ECESIS project, the teaching material intended to be made available in Open Model CourseWare will address several different maturity levels and several needs for understanding the advantages, characteristics, and applicability conditions of MDE.
More details are available here: http://www.eclipse.org/gmt/omcw/about.php.
ATL became a promoted GMT components. See this news for more details. ATL web site moved from GMT to M2M. And it is now accessible here: http://www.eclipse.org/m2m/atl/.
As a consequence, the old ATL mailing list migrated to the Eclipse M2M newsgroup. For information about accessing Eclipse newsgroups, see: http://www.eclipse.org/newsgroups/. Last point, for the Eclipse M2M posting. Since we are going to share this newsgroup with the other M2M components, the PMC has asked us to prefix all posts (questions, answers, comments), with the component name. You will need to add [ATL] at the beginning of the subject of your post o that they may be distinguished from the posts related to the other components.
The ATL transformation language defined by INRIA has been recognized as a standard component in Eclipse. ATL is now integrated into the new M2M (Model-to-Model, http://www.eclipse.org/m2m/) project. This project belongs to the Eclipse modeling activities branch (Eclipse Modeling, http://www.eclipse.org/modeling/).
Together with the Borland and Compuware solutions, ATL will now be part of the set of Eclipse recommended tools for performing model-to-model transformations. ATL allows to implement some simple UML-to-Java conversions but also much more complex transformations, for instance in the context of heterogeneous data or modernization of legacy systems.
The integration of ATL into this new M2M project is an important recognition. ATL will be used in the same way as other Eclipse standard solutions such as EMF, Ecore or GMF. Moreover, the support of the Eclipse foundation developers' community will ensure to ATL an important additional help for development and will also offer good stability in time to language users. Some companies did not wait this for integrating ATL into their own toolset or even into their commercial offers (ATL is released under the EPL license).
ATL is being used in the ModelPlex European project. It is also an official selected solution in the "Usine Logicielle" project of the "System@tic" Paris cluster (http://www.systematic-paris-region.org/) or in the French OpenEmbeDD project. More than one hundred industrial and academic sites are using ATL in many countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, USA, Canada, Brazil, etc). In France the TopCased project of the Aerospace valley cluster (http://www.topcased.org/) also uses the ATL solution. Many university centers, such as the "Ecole Centrale de Lille", are using ATL as a basis for teaching MDA approaches.
In 2004 the ATL initiative already won an award for the "IBM Eclipse Innovation Grants". Since this date, the language has evolved in three successive versions, with now an advanced development environment, a stable virtual machine, a significant transformations' library and an important users and contributors community. The language has been designed and developed at INRIA Nantes by Frederic Jouault who is now the Eclipse M2M project leader. One of his main tasks will be to synchronize the efforts on the future ATL developments with the Compuware and Borland components, which are more aligned on the QVT recommendation for model transformation as defined by the OMG.
The recognition of the ATL language into the Eclipse modeling project is a very significant example of the current success of open-source approaches. In four years, an innovative product, coming from basic research and supported by various initiatives such as the ModelWare Integrated European project has evolved from the status of laboratory prototype to the level of stable industrial solution.
Following the GMT migration to the new Eclipse top-level project: EMP (Eclipse Modeling Project), the GMT FAQ has been updated.
GMT is welcoming a new component: MoDisco.
MoDisco (for Model Discovery) is an Eclipse GMT component for model-driven reverse engineering. The objective is to allow practical extractions of models from legacy systems. 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 and a set of guidelines are provided to the Eclipse contributors to bring their own solutions to discover models in various kinds of legacy.
More details are available here: http://www.eclipse.org/gmt/modisco/about.php.
GMT is welcoming a new component: GEMS.
The goal of the Generic Eclipse Modeling System (GEMS) is to bridge the gap between the communities experienced with visual metamodeling tools, such as the Generic Modeling Environment (GME), and those built around the Eclipse modeling technologies, such as the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) and Graphical Modeling Framework (GMF). GEMS is being developed by the Distributed Object Computing (DOC) Group at Vanderbilt University's Institute for Software Integrated Systems (ISIS) and other collaborators, such as Siemens Corporate Technology. GEMS is an open project and encourages developers to extend, enhance, and use its tools. GEMS has been developed in conjunction with research work done in collaboration with Siemens, IBM, and PrismTech.
As part of the changes related to the new Eclipse Modeling project, the GMT newsgroup has moved. Please use the new GMT newsgroup: eclipse.modeling.gmt.
The old one "eclipse.technology.gmt" will be archived.
GMT is welcoming a new component: Epsilon.
The Epsilon component aims at building a framework for supporting the construction of domain-specific languages and tools for model management tasks, i.e., model merging, model comparison, inter- and intra-model consistency checking, text generation, etc. It will provide a metamodel-agnostic approach that supports model management tasks for any kind of metamodel and model instances.
GMT is particularly proud to join the new EMP Top-Level Eclipse Project. Many thanks for Richard Gronback of Borland Software and Ed Merks of IBM for having made all this possible.
A recent press release describes the new EMP project: http://www.eclipse.org/org/press-release/20060515modeling.php
This is the beginning of new and exciting adventures in Model Driven Engineering (MDE).
The GMT project will play its role of research incubator within EMP by continuing to produce advanced research prototypes in MDE. Hopefully part of the ideas and software contributed in these research protoptypes may later find their way to widely distributed commercial MDE tooling.
GMT is looking forward to welcoming new high quality prototypes that will extend model engineering practices beyond current limits and assess MDE practical applicability.
Being part of the new EMP Top-Level Project means that a lot of new synergies are going to be discovered and will foster collaboration between industry-based tools and research prototypes, often using recognized standards like the OMG/MOF Metalanguage.
Jean Bezivin, GMT project lead
A new release build of AM3 is available.
More details about this release are available here.
A new release build of ADT is available. There are two versions, one for Eclipse 3.0 and one for Eclipse 3.1.
More details about this release are available here.
GMT is welcoming a new subproject: MOFScript.
The MOFScript subproject aims at developing tools and frameworks for supporting model to text transformations, e.g., to support generation of implementation code or documentation from models. It should provide a metamodel-agnostic framework that allows usage of any kind of metamodel and its instances for text generation.
This is a zoo of metamodels. This name has been choosen for this repository in order to convey the idea that we have here different species of metamodels, from variable origins.
In this zoo all metamodels are described in KM3. KM3 is a DSL (Domain Specific Language) for the specification of metamodels.
A new GMT FAQ is available here.
GMT is welcoming a new subproject: oAW.
openArchitectureWare (oAW) is a suite of tools and components assisting with model driven software development built upon a modular MDA/MDD generator framework implemented in JavaTM supporting arbitrary import (design) formats, meta models, andoutput (code) formats. Supportive tools (such as editors and model browsers) are based on the Eclipse platform. openArchitectureWare is a "tool for building MDSD/MDA tools". At the core there is a modular framework consisting of instantiators (to read model concrete syntax), a model validation facility based on metamodels and a powerful code generation engine based onthe XPAND template language. Model-to-Model transformations are also supported.
Creation of AM3 subproject under GMT. The goal of AM3 (ATLAS MegaModel Management) is to provide a practical support for global model management.
Change of policy: Now that the number of GMT subprojects is increasing, this news list will be only used to announce global GMT events like creation of new subprojects or important milestones. The news related to individual subprojects (AMW, ATL, Fuut-je, UMLX, Viatra2, ...) will be posted under the pages of those subprojects. For example announce of new ATL transformations will no more be posted here.
Source code of ATL virtual machine is now available on GMT web site. Three new plugins have been added (vm, mdr4atl, emf4atl). Due to these new plugins, there are some modifications in installation process. This is explained in download section.
Start of a new GMT subproject: VIATRA2.
UMLX 0.0.0 available for evaluation as a graphical Ecore meta-model editor.
New versions of the KM3 User Manual and the ATL User Manual are now available on the ATL documentation page.
A weaving example, bridging UML Profiles and DSLs, is now available on the AMW example page.
The specification of the ATL Virtual Machine is now available on the ATL documentation page.
First version of AMW (ATLAS Model Weaver) is now available. Find the binaries and sources download section.
With the agreement of present GMT participants and following some previous discussions with Eclipse management, some changes in the present functioning of GMT will occur soon. You may have seen some traces of this in recent posts on the Eclipse news groups. The GMT Web site will be progressively updated to correspond to the new scheme.
Without changing the initial charter of the group, GMT is really becoming a holding project for a variety of modelling subprojects.
To summarize, the main decisions that have been taken are the following:
- The scope of GMT has been made more precise in order not to interfere too much with already existing or newly created Eclipse projects. While keeping in sync with initial project definition, we also emphasize the research orientation of GMT. The project is welcoming high quality Eclipse research prototypes in the field of Model Driven Software Development (MDSD).
- This focus on research prototypes will help us make more precise the boundaries with other more industry-oriented projects. The GMF project that already went through initial Eclipse acceptance is focusing on industrial graphical editors for model engineering etc. The MDDi proposal is supposed to provide a stable and solid industrial-strength MDSD integration framework. We anticipate rich and narrow collaborations between all Eclipse MDSD related initiatives. One common characteristic of all these GMT research prototypes is that they are usually based on the same underlying framework (EMF), which clearly facilitates natural interoperability between them.
- As a consequence GMT is going to evolve towards a set of research subprojects. Each subproject will be under the responsibility of one person. New projects are accepted if they may define a precise goal and roadmap and provide initial material showing the maturity stage of the proposed subproject. In most cases the material will be source code but other basic artefacts could also be provided like metamodels, transformations, etc.
So this is a call for new subprojects. If you have an Eclipse based prototype in the field of MDSD or if you are considering building one, GMT may be the place to give visibility to your work and to attract a community of users and contributors. In the coming months some new proposals we have already received are going to join the list of already existing GMT subprojects like Fuut-je or ATL. Your contribution may help broadening the scope of available model engineering tools and set up the foundations for a widely available MDSD platform.
Jean Bezivin
GMT project coordinator
ATLAS Group (INRIA and LINA) - University of Nantes
2, rue de la Houssiniere - 44322 Nantes cedex 3 - France
tel. +33 2 51 12 58 13 - fax. +33 2 51 12 58 12 - cell. +33 6 14 32 22 36 - e-MAIL: Jean.Bezivin_AT_univ-nantes.fr
Fuut-je update, the code generation component for GMT, with support for the new PHP application framework.
A new ATL plugin is available: KM3. It provides tools to use a textual concrete syntax that eases the coding of metamodels. KM3 files can be transformed into Ecore metamodels and vice versa. KM3 documentation is available in documentation section
