Re: [emft-dev] Contribution to EMF-Compare as a Master's Thesis

[Cédric Brun <cedric.brun@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Tobias,

Any kind of contribution is obviously welcome! 

It really depend on your own interests but here are the challenges I can think 
of  (both intellectualy and practically interesting) :

* Differences representation and integration in graphical modelers : this one 
is tricky in the sense that we did not figured out yet what is the best 
representation of differences for the end user. That's part of the reason why 
we define many API so that other plugins may refactor the way differences are 
kept and displayed. The user quickly ends up with many differences and the 
classical hierarchical way of representing models doesn't fit with the user 
expectations, there's obviously room for improvements.

Correlated to this subject is "how we can visualize differences in a graphical 
modeler", it's not a technical concern as it doesn't seems like GMF is a 
blocker for that, it's more, there again, about what we need to display, 
where, and how, to help the user manage the model evolutions.

The Ecore Tools guys want to integrate emf compare in the Ecore modeler, this 
could be a nice testbed for ideas concerning the graphical representations.


* Huge models management : the current implementation of the 
GenericMatchEngine is not able to handle huge models, (by huge models I mean 
more than 1GB ones) because the principles and algorithms are just not rights 
for such data. Another interesting subject could be to provides an 
alternative match engines for such models. 

That's two subjects I can think of but of course it's up to you, just to let 
you know on the "research" side we'll work in the following month with the 
Aquila University (Italy) on a model representation of the differences 
(models changeset/patch) providing the same features as the textual patch 
format (with fuzzy searchs and stuffs like that) but all the other areas are 
opened for experimentation :)

In a nutshell, the first subject I described seems to fit quite nicely with 
your "part 2", the second one is just another area in which we know we have 
some progress to do but whatever you want to focus on we would gladly help 
you !

You can use this mailling-list or come on the #eclipse-modeling IRC chan for 
live discussions, Laurent is "Kellindil" there and I'm "Tortoose".

Cheers,

Cédric


Le Thursday 10 April 2008 11:05:54 Tobias Jähnel, vous avez écrit :
> EMF Compare developers,
>
> I am Tobias Jaehnel, student of Computer Science in Nuremberg, Germany.
>
> I'm going to start my Master's Thesis and I'm interested in
> contributing to the EMF-Compare project.
>
> Background:
> The topic I have chosen for my thesis it based on a state-chart
> editor, which uses EMF and GEF. This editor has been developed in the
> company I'm working for, for very particular needs. My thesis should
> be divided into two parts.
>
> Part 1: Design and Implementation of an algorithm to find the
> differences between two state charts
> Part 2: Visualizing the differences in one or two ways, which are
> convenient for the user
>
> After some research I found EMF Compare, which fits our requirements
> and entirely covers Part 1.
> Since I do not want to reinvent the wheel but are still very
> interested in this topic, I'm looking for some other challenge now.
>
> Can you think of a component or topic I could develop for you?
> I actually want to keep Part 2, but I would appreciate it, if I could
> make a contribution to EMF Compare in addition.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Regards,
> Toby
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