Henrik,
I appreciate your constructive approach. As I said in my other
note, and as Miles pointed out, we (the PMC and all Eclipse
projects) are open and transparent (at least we intend to be), but
we are not a democracy. Even if we were, democracies have leaders
and they make tough decisions, even ones the populace doesn't like.
They don't (or at least we'd hope), spend most of their time looking
at polls with a focus on how best to be most popular. They consider
the pressing issues carefully, consult with experts, and arrive at
decisions aimed at achieving the best possible results.
Regards,
Ed
On 18/08/2012 2:42 PM, Henrik
Rentz-Reichert wrote:
Hi Philipp (and all),
I have the impression that you disagree not only with the
wording of Ed's text but rather with the whole line.
I thus would suggest that you write your own version of contents
of the new landing page.
Both versions we could put on separate Wiki pages (and have
discussions about the wording there).
If there is still another principally different way to put it,
that can be added too.
Discussions about the principal lines we could still have on
this mailing list (modeling-pmc).
Finally we should make a poll (in which community? The modeling
PMC? The modeling committers? Everybody interested in modeling?)
about the principal direction of contents of the new landing
page.
Once that is decided we can have a second round of discussions
of the wording (if necessary) and then finalize the text.
Of course we should set also some dates: deadline for content
proposals, poll about principal line, deadline for discussions
of wording.
I think this approach would we transparent, open and democratic.
If anybody has a technical solution better suited for our
purpose than Wiki, I have no objection.
How does that sound?
Regards,
Henrik
Am 18.08.2012 13:53, schrieb Philipp
W. Kutter | Montages AG:
Hi, Sven and PMC members.
First of all, I 100% agree with Miles:
XText has a very good landing page. Excellend, and an example to
follow. As well, the framework
has an excellent reputation, and all of our clients use it with
success.
Sven wrote:
I have to say that I like the text Ed proposed. But I can
imagine (and your analysis certainly makes that clear) that
other members of the EMP have a different view on it. I
think the underlying problem is that there are very
different views on what 'modeling' actually is.
I agree that today, there are different views within the EMP
project, but this is only because we went away from a common
vision which was the strength that brought us to where we are
now.
Sven wrote:
I mainly see three different categories:
Sorry for not at all agreeing on this split, I will explain
below why.
Sven wrote:
*OMG's Modeling*
I see all the standards here backed by the ideas around
MDA.
I do no agree to split it. Large parts of the OMG community, and
major industry players (UBS, e.t.c.) agreed that the EMF is a
100% isomorphic variant of EMof, and thus is the basis for
everytthing.
The main idea of the MDA initiative (I cc the main author, so he
can correct me) is to use Mof as the center point, and model all
other standards, methodologies, especially the domain specific
ones with MOF.
EMF is exactly this, with Mof exchanged with ECore. As the OMG
community accepts ECore as the pragmatic implementation of Mof,
Eclipse Modeling Project, with its "onion layers" like Ed Merks
described in his text is thus an a pragmatic implementation of
MDA.
Nothing done with ECore can be "non MDA".
Spliting of "OMG's Modeling" from EMP is a huge step back, it
throws us de facto to the wrong thesis that it is simpler to
have your own little DSL than following MDA: EMP as a pragmatic
implementation of MDA has proven the contrary.
Sven wrote:
*Modeling at Runtime*
Using EMF as the domain model for software systems.
CDO is important here, but also things like data
binding and so on.
CDO is an excellent example of a technology that builds
transparently on ECore and thus extends the pragmatic
implemenation of MDA, which EMP is with an important runtime
component. CDO shows, that even things like persistence , that
where considered programmers omain, can be overed with a generic
framework, if you leverage modeling technology.
Sven wrote:
*Modeling as API design on steroids*
Anything that helps building the perfect abstraction
for your problem.
95% of people who know about the real problem in business do not
even know what an API is, but they know there business concepts,
their properties, dependencies, logic. We all worked for decades
to make modeling work for these 95%. As a result, the MDA
initiative found, that doing everything with UML2 is the wrong
way, and thanks to EMP we where able to explore many more ways
to express models. MDA as well found, that the main problem with
the 4GL's in the 90is was not that they could not do anything we
can do now, but that the metamodels of these DSLs where all
defined in proprietary, diverse ways, and thus, all we need is
to agree how to define the metamodesls, and the common agreement
is: ECore.
Then thanks to projects like XText and GMF-T we are able to use
these DSLs, without having to create huge commercial frameworks.
I am sorry, but I do not agree here as well: A good problem
abstraction is of course one of the main topics, but this is
certainly not for API design but for
- capturing expert domain knowledge of vertical industries
- abstracting from technical details of common, technical
problem domains for making acccess to underlying implementations
easier
- creating simplified domain views, that can be understood by a
larger group of stakeholders.
I respect that there are different views and interests
and I don't think we should try to find an agreement on a
single message.
This is exactly the disaster I try to avoid:
We started from a common vision, we where able to pragmatically
adapt the dogmatic view we need to do all with EMof/CMof to
accept a scaling implementation like ECore as the basis,
and now we give this up.
We had a commonly agreed message in the old text, and if we are
not able to improve it along the lines Miles described, we
should simply keep it.
Did we get an absolute majority of project leaders or committers
vote for chaning the message? Maybe I am too Swiss, but for
changing this we
should have a more democratic process. Fundamental change of the
message without agreement of all stakeholders is not fair.
If some people want to define a new direction, then this is a
new project.
It would just try to be everything to everybody without
attracting or informing anybody in the end. I mainly see two
alternatives
1) We identify the different kinds of 'modeling' (ideally
not more than three) and install a front page dispatching to
individual subpages.
2) We live without a website for EMP and let every
project define its message as it seems fit. E.g. the text
proposed by Ed could become the text for the EMF project
website.
100% disagree.
Both alternatives destroy the progress we made, and which was
the basis for a decision to follow the EMP by many big
enterprises.
The options I see are
1) We ask for people who find their views not well enough
expressed on the EMP page, and make a link to their pages,
telling
that these people define the topic differently than it was up to
now in the EMP.
2) We together agree on an improved version of the old text,
which does NOT change the direction.
For instance, while the text certainly does not enough metion
the work done in the DSL area, it as well doe not clear enough
tell that
EMP is commonly agreed to be a pragmatic implemenatation of the
MDA, and that most OMG standards today have a metamodel done in
ECore.
3) We commonly agree on a changed view on modeling, which we
then openly express on the EMP page.
I heard and read things like "the frontiers between modeling and
programming are disapearing" and "defining your own DSL and
generating results from it is much a better way than following
the MDA initiative to have a common metamodel of your domain
models."
While I do not agree with both, I could life with an open
statement agreed by the EMP community on this.
But simply removing the EMP page, or changing its message
fundamentally does not seem acceptable to me. Of course
Microsoft would be happy to see this, because honestly, and this
is only my personal opinion, the Eclipse Modeling Project,
bringing together the dynamics of open source and open standards
is THE killer argument for the Java platform. Otherwise, if you
look just for cooler, better, smarter software, you may very
probably land with the .net stack.
I am CCing David Frankel, the author of the MDA intiative,
Richard Gronback, who was the co-lead of the EMP with Ed, and
had to stop since Borland stop, and Michael Guttman, the main
author of the Corba standard: three people who invested a lot of
their time in bringing the modeling vision as we agreed on
forward, and are representative of a larger group of people who
are relying on the EMP as a basis to finaly go a big step
forward, rather than going constantly up and down the waves of
new framework, new programming langauges, new platforms.
We would disapoint all of them and destroy a large number of
innovative long-term initiatives by changing the direction.
Ed Merks: I respect your current like for fresh
approaches and clever ideas, as well as real cool things,
but the world relies on you keeping the ship going in the same
direction! It has been a long way.
Regards, Philipp
Dear Ed and Modeling PMC.
I'd like to comment on the proposed text for the
Eclipse Modling Project.
As I am passionate in the subject, my mail became long, and emotional.
Thus the conclusions ahead:
Ed: as a friend, in my opinion, the new text is a mockery of your oeuvre,
and if you wrote it out of modesty, as I know you, I would propose, to reconsider it.
The old text (see below) was great!
Now below the long analysis.
I wish you all a very nice WE,
Philipp
The new text:
Also as previously discussed, the website is a disaster area. We need a
landing page with a clear message. I propose the following content:
*Modeling: Faster, Smarter, Better*
The bewildering complexity of modern software begs for a fresh
approach focusing on high-level design, delegating menial tasks to
tools and frameworks.From a concise description of your problem
domain, a complete solution can be inferred.
*What is Eclipse Modeling?*
Eclipse Modeling is an integrated assortment of extensible tools and
frameworks for solving everyday problems.
At its core lies the Eclipse Modeling Framework, a rich abstraction
for describing, composing, and manipulating structured information.
Around this core, onion-like technology layers provide powerful
facilities to address most everything you need.
Up to now we had:
"The Eclipse Modeling Project focuses on
the evolution and promotion of
model-based development technologies within the
Eclipse community
by providing a unified set of modeling frameworks,
tooling, and
standards implementations."
If you compare the two versions, and consider that
"Eclipse Modeling (Framework)" is
the name of the project, the word "model" is mentioned
exactly once.
While the old text makes it clear that
- we focus on "model-based" technologies,
- it provides "modeling frameworks and tooling",
- and ends prominently with "standards implementation"
The new text does not even mention that it focuses on
models, it rather mentions as focus
point "high-level design", whereas the specificaiton
phase is not mentioned at all.
The new text tells it provides "an integrated
assortment of extensible tools and frameworks
for solving everyday problems." No mentioning of
tooling and framework to support the
activity of modeling, as in the last text.
Last but not least, the new text presents the project
as a "fresh approach", that is
"Faster, Smarter, Better". It does not even mention,
that we are implementing leading
industry standards like EMof (implemented by ECore),
Mof2Tex (implemented by Acceleo),
QVTO, OCL, UML2, BPMN.
...
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Dr. Henrik Rentz-Reichert
mailto:hrr@xxxxxxxxx
+49-7551-831365
Am Bacheck 7A
D-88662 Überlingen-Deisendorf
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