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General question about connection between model and "real world" [message #1847564]

Mon, 01 November 2021 13:42

René Hilgemann

Messages: 4
Registered: October 2021

Junior Member

Hello everyone,

First of all, sorry for asking such a general and probably stupid question!

I currently don't fully understand HOW to use an EMF model once it has been created.

As I understand it, an EMF model is the basis for SIRIUS and with SIRIUS it is possible to generate a concrete model on a very abstract level (e.g. in the form of a diagram or a table, etc.).
In addition, EMF (and generally the "model-based software development" approach) is used so that you can create a model with little programming knowledge and then convert this model into a real program.

Am I correct so far?

I have now looked at the examples (e.g. https://wiki.eclipse.org/Sirius/Tutorials/Mindstorms). My problem is that I don't understand what happens after a model has been created in SIRIUS. What do you do with it next / in practice?
In the Mindstorm example, the model defines, for example, which actions there are and the order and so on. But these actions (in the ecore-model) never access the API of the Mindstorm robot (at least I don't find any API accesses). I would have expected to end up with a program that can really interact with the robot.
So what is the purpose of it?

Thanks!

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Re: General question about connection between model and "real world" [message #1847568 is a reply to message #1847564]

Mon, 01 November 2021 14:33

Ed Willink

Messages: 7669
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

Hi

At its simplest an EMF/UML model just enables you to structure your information in a portable fashion. Thus when dealing with People you may have a Person class and a child relationship. You may enrich your model with operations that compute derived properties such as number-of-children. The model is not magic. It has no telepathy to auto-program what you are thinking or to scan the web for solutions; it structures what and only what you have defined. It is up to you to define what you want. So to create a pictorial family tree you will need to encode a mapping from Person and Person.children to your favourite graphical widgets, and if you have more than 100 people you will almost certainly need to introduce some filtering categories, .... You can of course structure your data in custom Java / C++ code and achieve the same effect, but you lose the benefits of shared technologies, not least of which is XML rather than bespoke information interchange. Each custom Java program is custom. Each modelled application can share its meta-aspects. In similar fashion, most of us like to share the GIT tooling, rather than develop a custom CM capability for each new program.

Regards

Ed Willink

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Re: General question about connection between model and "real world" [message #1847580 is a reply to message #1847568]

Mon, 01 November 2021 17:30

René Hilgemann

Messages: 4
Registered: October 2021

Junior Member

Hello Ed,

thank you so far!

So if I get this right, the tutorial https://wiki.eclipse.org/Sirius/Tutorials/Mindstorms only shows how models and tools can be made available to end users in SIRIUS.

The actual functionality (e.g. controlling the robot) would then have to be implemented manually (by overwriting the code etc.).
The model itself only defines the basics, such as which operations there are and how they are related.

Regards,
René

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