http://abstratt.com/blog A company obsessed with one single goal: stopping people from writing so much code Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:06:08 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en UML has been getting a lot of criticism from all sides, even from the modeling community. Sure, it has its warts: it is a huge language, that wants to be all things to all kinds of people (business analysts, designers, developers, users) it has a specification that is lengthy, hard to navigate ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2010/02/08/uml-may-suck-but-is-there-anything-better/ It seems that people that resist the idea of model-driven development (MDD) do so because they believe no tool can have the level of insight a programmer can. They are totally right about that last part. But that is far from being the point of MDD anyways. However, I think ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2010/02/06/myths-that-give-model-driven-development-a-bad-name/ Last December I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Jordi Cabot, the maintainer of Modeling-Languages.com, a web site on all things moden-driven. We talked mostly about the TextUML Toolkit project, but Jordi also asked about my opinions on more general subjects, such as modeling notations, textual modeling frameworks, DSLs, ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2010/01/25/interview-at-modeling-languagescom/ The TextUML Toolkit has since release 1.2 had a metamodel extension package (inaptly named 'meta'). This metamodel extension package defined new metaclasses not available in UML such as: closure - an activity that has another activity as context conversion action - an action that flows an input directly as output just changing ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2010/01/17/doing-away-with-custom-uml-metaclasses-in-textuml/ Release 1.5 of the TextUML Toolkit is now available from the update sites, for both Eclipse 3.5+ and 3.4. Update or install. We got a few new features in this release. Content assist There is now early support for content assist (contributed by Attila Bak), with initial support for stereotype ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2009/12/02/textuml-toolkit-15-is-out/ I have been trying to figure out whether the TextUML notation for action semantics can be dealt with properly by tools such as Xtext and EMFText (class models and state machines should be fine). For example, given this structural model fragment: class Advertisement attribute summary : String; ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2009/11/29/can-textuml-be-implemented-the-generative-way-with-xtext-or-emftext/ Last Wednesday I attended the Eclipse Modeling Day in Toronto. Coming all the way from Victoria, I must have been the participant that came from farthest. Except, of course, those folks from SAP AG and Itemis that were presenting. But I was really glad to be there. I finally had ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2009/11/20/eclipse-modeling-day-in-toronto/ Release 1.4 of the TextUML Toolkit is now available from the update sites, for both Eclipse 3.5+ and 3.4 (by the way, it is possible this will be the last major release targetting Eclipse 3.4, unless someone volunteers to generate and test builds for 3.4). This is mostly a bug fix ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2009/11/06/textuml-toolkit-141-is-out/ Last week I did a short presentation on "Model-driven prototyping" for the Vancouver Island Java User Group (VIJUG). It was lots of fun, with good participation from the group. I also showed a quick demo of AlphaSimple, our upcoming service for model-driven prototyping, which seemed to be well received. For the ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2009/10/02/model-driven-prototyping-presentation-vijug/ It's been a while since the last post, but I have a good excuse. I have been working on a new MDD product named AlphaSimple. AlphaSimple is our upcoming web-based service that renders functional prototypes straight from rich domain models. The goal is to bridge the gap between design and requirement ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2009/09/28/model-driven-prototyping-with-alphasimple/ The TextUML Toolkit 1.3 is now available, 4.5 months after 1.2. If you already got RC1 (1.3.0.20090614...), it is the same build, no need to upgrade again. Otherwise, just point the Eclipse update mechanism to: http://abstratt.com/update/ - if you are using Eclipse Galileo, or http://abstratt.com/update/3.4/ - if you are using Eclipse Ganymede. Please ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2009/06/23/textuml-toolkit-13-is-out/ The first release candidate towards version 1.3 of the TextUML Toolkit is now available. The feature overview page has been updated to reflect the changes in the 1.3 cycle. Please give it a try and report any issues you might find. If no serious problems are found with this build, it ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2009/06/15/textuml-toolkit-13rc1-is-now-available/ Wow, it is been more than a month since my last post, but I have been busier than ever working on an upcoming MDD-related product (cannot say much now other than that you will hear more about it here first). However, In TextUML Toolkit-land things are looking pretty exciting. More hands ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2009/06/11/a-months-worth-of-news/ I have heard the mantra 'code is model' several times. Even though I always thought I got the idea of what it meant, only now I decided to do some research to find out where it came from. Turns out that it originated from a blog post that MS' Harry ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2009/05/03/on-code-being-model/ Even though it has always been possible to open models generated by the TextUML Toolkit in UML2-based diagramming tools, until 1.2 the Toolkit assigned new ids to each element every time a model was regenerated. That meant that any diagrams based on the model being regenerated would become invalid as ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2009/04/13/new-in-13-m1-better-integration-with-diagramming-tools/ I have been doing some exploratory work around running the TextUML Toolkit's compiler as a standalone Java application. In other words, without OSGi. You Eclipse/OSGi heads out there might ask: why would anyone want to do that? The answer is: enhanced applicability. Severing ties with the Eclipse runtime/OSGi means the ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2009/04/05/eclipse-without-osgi-textuml-compiler-as-a-stand-alone-java-application/ I decided it was time to start using Eclipse 3.5 before it went RC or else if I find any blockers there won't be time left for them to get fixed before the next release this Summer. I have been on the other side of the fence and know how ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2009/03/27/not-installing-the-textuml-toolkit-12-on-eclipse-35-m6/ I strongly believe queries are an essential part of a domain model. As such, in our quest to have (UML) models that can fully (yet abstractly) describe object models for the common enterprise applications, we cannot leave out first class support for queries. But how do you do queries in UML? ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2009/03/18/sql-queries-in-uml/ The TextUML Toolkit 1.2 is now available, 5 months after 1.1, when it first became an open source project. If you already got RC2 (1.2.0.200902011417), it is the same build, no need to upgrade again. Otherwise, just point the Eclipse update mechanism to: http://abstratt.com/update/ Please see the feature page for a summary ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2009/02/04/textuml-toolkit-12-is-out/ Acceleo is a cool open-source code generation tool that has great integration with the Eclipse IDE and EMF-based metamodels. The tool has a strong emphasis on simplicity and ease of use, which, for an open source development tool, is really a breeze of fresh air. The Acceleo website includes a repository ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2009/02/04/textuml-toolkit-acceleo-generate-code-from-uml-models/ A new RC build of the TextUML Toolkit is now available. It has one bug fix since RC1. Basically, when rendering stereotypes, the metaclasses extended by the stereotype were not being shown. Not really critical, but isolated and safe enough to be fixed now. Pending any last minute bug reports ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2009/02/01/textuml-toolkit-12-rc2-fixes-stereotype-extension-rendering-bug/ Yikes, it happened again. A user reported that the TextUML Toolkit 1.2 RC0 build announced earlier this week wouldn't run on Java 5 VMs (Mac users would be the most affected). This has just been fixed (one bundle was being compiled against Java 6) and a new release candidate is ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2009/01/28/textuml-toolkit-12-rc1-fixes-java-5-compatibility-issue/ The third milestone build and first release candidate of the TextUML Toolkit, the IDE for textual UML  modeling, is now available from the update site. The feature page shows all the new features in this new release, but here they are: primitive types data types (a.k.a. structs) required extensions for prototypes ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2009/01/25/textuml-toolkit-12-rc0-m3-is-now-available/ UML is known to be a huge language, and that has two problems: it is too complex, having way more features than most applications will ever need, and can still be insufficient, as no single language will ever cover everybody's needs. In the article "Customizing UML: Which Technique is Right for ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2009/01/18/closures-in-uml-extending-metamodel-with-textuml-toolkit/ No tool is an island. That is even more important when we are talking about highly focused single-purpose tools such as the TextUML Toolkit. As you probably know, the TextUML Toolkit is a tool for UML modeling using a textual notation, but that is about it. The TextUML Toolkit itself ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/12/23/integrating-textuml-toolkit-with-other-modeling-tools/ The second milestone build towards TextUML Toolkit release 1.2 is now available from the milestone update site. Get it while it is hot. This milestone adds support for some UML language features: required extensions for stereotypes data types primitive types But what is really exciting is that this milestone is also the first build that ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/12/15/textuml-toolkit-12-m2-is-now-available/ Yesterday I checked in support for UML primitive types in the TextUML Toolkit. As an example of the syntax, here is the UMLPrimitiveTypes model, shipped in Eclipse UML2, rendered by the TextUML Source viewer: [Standard::ModelLibrary] model UMLPrimitiveTypes; apply Standard; primitive Boolean; primitive Integer; primitive String; primitive UnlimitedNatural; end. As you can see, primitive types are declared using the keyword ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/12/02/feature-primitive-types/ Just checked in a new feature in the TextUML Toolkit: support for data types (a.k.a. structs). This is an example of a data type declaration: datatype UserName attribute firstName : String; attribute lastName : String; end; You can declare operations and specialize other classifiers as usual. Change set Here are the individual changes ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/11/28/feature-data-types/ Great discussion over @ Slashdot: Is Open Source Software a Race To Zero? I really think the open source approach has lots of benefits, for the software itself and all parties involved. However, I would say it will probably take a decade before sound business models based on open source are ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/11/23/open-source-software-a-race-to-zero/ I would like to see the TextUML Toolkit as an Eclipse MDT subproject. Not long ago, I talked to Kenn Hussey and Ed Merks (they lead the UML2 and EMF projects, respectively) about the idea of proposing the Toolkit to the EMO and they both liked it (Ed actually suggested ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/11/13/call-for-contributors/ Just checked in a new feature in the TextUML Toolkit: required extensions for stereotypes (honestly, I didn't know about that feature in UML until I read this post on the Eclipse UML2 newsgroup). The following is a stereotype extending two metaclasses (uml::Class and uml::Operation): profile my_profile; import uml; stereotype foo extends Class, Operation required end; end. In ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/11/11/feature-required-extensions-for-stereotypes/ The first milestone build of the next TextUML Toolkit release is now available from the milestone update site. This preview build is the first to include support for modeling behavior using action semantics. I hinted at this capability here before, and I plan to cover action semantics in the TextUML ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/11/07/executable-models-with-textuml-toolkit-12-m1/ Do you know what UML can do for you? I mean, did you know that UML models can actually do things? One of the least known features of UML is that you can model detailed imperative behavior. The UML "instruction set" can do things like: create and destroy objects create and destroy ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/11/02/what-can-uml-do-for-you/ This is actually old news for many people, but recently I learned (by pure chance) that the OMG issued a RFP for a "Concrete Syntax for a UML Action Language". Letters of intent are due on December 8th. Submissions, one year after. OMG members only need apply (Aww...). I wonder ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/10/15/omg-issues-rfp-concrete-syntax-for-action-semantics/ I posted this earlier this week on the UML2 newsgroup, thought I would share it here too... I published a TextUML rendition of the UML 2.1 metamodel that is shipped by Eclipse UML2 here (warning: 5.9k lines, 370Kb of text). It starts like this: (...) model uml; apply Ecore; apply Standard; import ecore; (* A comment is ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/10/14/uml-metamodel-as-text/ Shorthand notation for both composite and aggregate associations has just been checked in (r99-r100). It follows the same spirit as the existing shorthand for plain associations (a.k.a. references). composition <end-name> : <referenced-type-name>; or aggregation <end-name> : <referenced-type-name>; That will result in a new unnamed association with two member ends, one named, owned by the declaring classifier, ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/09/16/feature-shorthand-notation-for-aggregation-and-composition/ I often see the TextUML Toolkit being compared to tools that produce UML diagrams from textual descriptions. Examples of tools like that are ModSL, MetaUML and UMLGraph. But that doesn't really make sense, and here is why: these tools produce diagrams from text. The TextUML Toolkit produces models from text. ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/09/10/diagrams-models/ TextUML Toolkit 1.1 is out! This is the first release after the TextUML Toolkit became an open source project. Besides the adoption of the Eclipse Public License, these are the new features that were added in 1.1: more UML features exposed by the textual notation: abstract operations and parameter direction modifiers more ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/09/02/textuml-toolkit-11-is-out/ Since I started working on the TextUML Toolkit more than a year ago, I have been asking myself whether it would make sense to make it available under an open source license. Open sourcing a product is a tough decision. Once you take that road, there is no way back, at ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/08/27/the-textuml-toolkit-needs-you/ I just completed the code for supporting parameter direction modifiers. When this feature makes into the next build, modelers will be able to choose for named parameters any of the standard parameter direction kinds: out, inout, or (the default) in. By the way, the syntax for specifying return types remains ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/08/21/feature-uml-parameter-direction-kind/ One potential downside people often point out about using TextUML as a notation for UML is that it is yet another language to learn. But that is not really a well founded argument. TextUML is not a full-blown language, it is just an alternative notation for UML, the de facto ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/08/06/not-yet-another-language/ I just uploaded the first interactive presentation showing how to install and configure the TextUML Toolkit on Eclipse 3.4. It starts with a plain Eclipse Platform Runtime install, and guides the reader through the following steps: making sure you have the right version of Eclipse (3.4) adding the TextUML Toolkit update site installing ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/07/29/demo-installing-configuring-and-exploring-the-textuml-toolkit/ According to an announcement made on the acceleo-dev mailing list, Acceleo 2.3.0 has been released today. Congrats to the folks at Obeo! The latest bits are already available from Acceleo's update site, but the download page still shows 2.2.1 as the latest release available. That is one less excuse for using ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/07/25/one-less-reason-for-using-eclipse-33/ I am proud to announce that the TextUML Toolkit reached version 1.0! It is basically the same as the RC3 build, made available earlier this week, with version numbers updated to reflect the status of release. You can download the TextUML Toolkit 1.0 from here. Even if it still preserves the same ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/07/09/textuml-toolkit-10-has-been-released/ The Pet Store-like model-driven sample application is now available. This initial version contains UML models for a few of the key entities, and generates the domain model classes and their corresponding Hibernate mapping files. I noticed the generated mapping files (or maybe the models) have a few issues and/or missing ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/07/08/sample-application-textuml-toolkit-rc3-are-now-available/ Even after cutting scope to close to half of what I was planning, I failed to accomplish what I set off to do in the 30-day challenge. I basically have the code and the example in a releasable state, but I have no means to publish a tutorial with images ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/07/01/times-up/ Well, things are not going so smoothly in TextUML Toolkit land. Hope the others are doing better. a user reported that the embedded Graphviz install was not working for him on Windows XP (I expected it to work on all Windows versions, but really tested only on Vista). After some investigation, ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/06/24/scope-cutting-season/ I finally figured out what was preventing me from exporting the product from Eclipse and worked around the problem. So the TextUML Toolkit RC1 is finally available for download, 4 days after planned. It turned out the issue that was blocking me was not specific to Eclipse 3.4 RC3. Still, I ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/06/19/moving-forward-again/ (To my fellow 30-dayers: It has been a while since my last post in the 30-day challenge category - at least if you think of how brief it is. But worse, I am also behind the schedule. My goal was to have the first release candidate on the 15th. It ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/06/18/the-bleeding-edge-not-for-the-faint-of-heart/ Contrary to my original intention of working this week on code generation and the sample application, I have been doing some improvements in the graphical visualization of UML models in EclipseGraphviz. EclipseGraphviz (a spin-off of the TextUML Toolkit) is an open source component (EPL) that integrates Graphviz into Eclipse, and ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/06/11/textuml-toolkit-layout-control-for-class-diagrams/ Took a first stab at creating the model for the sample application for the TextUML Toolkit. As I wrote here before, the sample application is derived from Sun's Java Pet Store application. Take a look at the models, and let me know how the textual notation feels. It is late and ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/06/06/textuml-toolkit-progress-on-the-sample-application/ M5 is now available. You can download a self-contained product install, or use the Eclipse update mechanism for adding the TextUML Toolkit to your Eclipse SDK (3.3 or 3.4), on Windows, Mac OS X or Linux. Please see instructions on the download page. This milestone was mostly about bug fixing (including ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/06/04/textuml-toolkit-m5-is-now-available/ As I mentioned before, I joined the 30 day product challenge with the TextUML Toolkit. Of the benefits of being part of the challenge, the ones that most attract me are the sense of being part of something greater, and the motivational power of peer pressure (even if imaginary) ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/06/04/textuml-toolkit-commitments-for-the-30-day-challenge/ There was a recent thread about UML on Slashdot, as a reaction to this blog post . The headline: "Is UML Really Dead, Or Only Cataleptic?". Many posters are clearly bitter towards UML. There seems to be a strong preference for using UML as a communication tool as opposed to ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/06/02/when-uml-meets-slashdot/ I decided to join a group of fellow mISVers in the 30-day product challenge. Differently from most of the other entries, which will go from product idea to release in 30 days, the TextUML Toolkit has been in development for quite a while now, so my challenge will be to ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/05/30/30-day-challenge-the-road-to-textuml-toolkit-10/ Up until now, the TextUML Toolkit tutorial had been the only piece of documentation available on the TextUML notation. Well, not anymore. I just finished writing some reference documentation on the notation on the wiki. Since I was already at it, I also created a few topics on UML 101 ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/05/16/documentation-on-textuml/ M4 has been declared. If you got the M4 test build that was announced a week ago, no need to download again, it is the same build. Please see that post for a summary of the changes. The TextUML tutorial has been updated in order to reflect the changes that ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/05/06/m4-has-left-the-building/ TextUML is a textual notation for UML. The TextUML Toolkit is an Eclipse-based IDE-like tool for creating UML models using the TextUML notation. Other tools follow the same approach. Emfatic (now an EMFT subproject) has been doing the same for EMF Ecore for a long time; the TMF project aims to ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/05/05/on-code-and-diagrams/ The first (and hopefully only) test build for M4 is now available. This is the first milestone where you can get the TextUML Toolkit via Update Manager. Just point Update Manager to: http://abstratt.com/textuml/update/ Actually, if you are planning to use Acceleo or UML2Tools, it is the best approach. From an Eclipse SDK ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/04/28/textuml-toolkit-m4-test-build-is-now-available/ The next VIJUG meeting will follow the Lightning Talks format. Last December, I attended the Eclipse Democamp in Vancouver which had a similar format and it was quite dynamic and fast-paced. I am looking forward to VIJUG's first meeting using this exciting format. I plan to do a demo on using ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/04/13/lightning-talks-at-aprils-vijug-meeting/ I will be presenting the TextUML Toolkit at this month's Vancouver Island Java User Group meeting. If you are in the Victoria area, I hope to see you there. It is free, and there will be pizza and drinks. Oh, and there will be a cool demo of the toolkit, ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/03/26/textuml-toolkit-at-vijug/ The latest milestone (M3) of the TextUML Toolkit has been declared today, as promised earlier here. As I said before, the focus for this milestone was stability and performance, so you can expect a much snappier and more solid tool. But it also includes some cool new features: you can drop ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/03/03/textuml-toolkit-is-now-available-on-multiple-platforms/ A TextUML Toolkit M3 test build is now available from the download page. If no serious issues are found in this build, it will be declared the final M3 build later this week. The focus for this milestone was to improve the performance, memory footprint and stability of the tool, and ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/02/28/textuml-toolkit-m3-test-build-is-available/ One common misconception is that UML is a graphical language and that any tools adopting alternative notations (such as a textual one) are inherently non-compliant. That can't be farther from the truth. Read on to understand. The fact is that the UML specification clearly separates abstract syntax (the kinds of elements ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/02/07/textual-notations-and-uml-compliance/ I just added a brand new FAQ section to the web site. It was long overdue. Here is the first batch of questions: Can a tool that uses a textual notation be considered UML compliant? What are the differences between TextUML and the real UML? I thought UML was all ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2008/01/27/frequently-asked-questions-about-the-textuml-toolkit/ Andreas Awenius, from Empowertec, was kind enough to devote not only one, but two blog postings on the TextUML Toolkit. While his first post was just a paragraph or two acknowledging the use of a textual notation for UML modeling in the TextUML Toolkit, his second post was a very ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/12/18/a-readers-thoughts-about-textuml/ Last Thursday happened the 1st Eclipse DemoCamp in Vancouver. It was a very dynamic event, with nine short talks packed into little more than one and a half hours. Attendance was high, I was really amazed to see such a great turnaround. The audience saw a diverse range of ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/12/08/eclipse-democamp-in-vancouver/ In a recent thread on the EMF newsgroup, I came to realize that there are (at least) two EMFs, each belonging to a different class of product, and attending completely distinct requirements. EMF's native metamodel, Ecore, is a generic, lean object-oriented metamodel based on a subset of UML. EMF's runtime framework provides ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/12/01/the-two-emfs-and-the-beauty-of-mdd/ One weird thing about UML is that there aren't collection types or array types. Basically, multiplicity and typing are totally independent concerns, represented by the metaclasses TypedElement and MultiplicityElement. A typed element is a named element that has a type, and that is all about it. Examples of typed elements are ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/11/17/uml-101-with-textuml-multiplicity-or/ One of the least known and understood concepts of UML is templates. Section 17.5 on version 2.1.1 of the UML specification covers the Templates package in 31 pages. What follows is an attempt at providing a summary of the mechanism in a way that is easy to understand without actually ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/11/01/uml-101-the-templates-package/ Starting today there is support for EclipseGraphviz on non-Windows platforms. Scott Bronson convinced me that while bundling a Graphviz install was a good idea for the Windows audience, on Linux and other platforms that really would not make sense given that Linux runs on many different architectures, not to ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/09/26/eclipsegraphviz-on-non-windows-platforms/ A few people have asked for a more convenient way of getting EclipseGraphviz other than by checking it out from the Subversion repository on Sourceforge, so I decided to create an update site with the most current code. Again, this is alpha code, so proceed with caution. Check out the EclipseGraphviz ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/09/19/eclipsegraphviz-gets-an-update-site/ A user has just reported that the TextUML Toolkit M2 build did not work at all for him. Ouch. Thankfully, the user included in the bug report all the information I needed to allow a quick diagnostic: turns out he was using a Java 5 VM, and he was getting ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/09/08/63/ Profiles and stereotypes form a lightweight mechanism for extending the UML metamodel. A stereotype allows you to tag elements in your model so they can be interpreted differently from ordinary model elements, much like annotations work in languages such as C# and Java. These tags can then be used to drive ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/09/06/profiles-and-stereotypes-in-textuml/ The primary goal of the EclipseGraphviz project is to support Eclipse-based applications that want to use Graphviz as an easy way of producing non-interactive structured diagrams without requiring the complexity of GEF or GMF. The TextUML Toolkit is the only application currently known to be based on the EclipseGraphviz project. ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/09/02/rendering-uml2-models-with-graphviz/ After a few minor bug fixes and improvements to the test build, the M2 milestone of TextUML Toolkit is available. With this milestone you can: create UML models using the TextUML textual representation visualize the model created using the conventional graphical notation for class diagrams This milestone does not support non-Windows platforms. ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/09/02/textuml-toolkit-10-m2-is-available/ A TextUML Toolkit 1.0 M2 test build is available off the download page. If no serious issues are found in this build, it will be declared the final M2 build later this week. The key feature developed for this milestone is the graphical class diagram viewer, which reuses the EclipseGraphviz project. ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/08/29/textuml-toolkit-10-m2-test-build-is-available/ In the context of providing class diagram visualization for TextUML Toolkit, I have developed a simple graphical viewing framework for Eclipse. It is content type based, and allows you to view anything a content provider has been registered for. For instance, any image file supported by SWT: But you can also ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/08/23/a-detour-from-a-detour-from-a-detour-or-how-a-graphical-viewing-framework-for-eclipse-was-born/ Just finished a raw implementation of a viewer for GraphViz dot files. Here is a screenshot: By the way, the project has been provisioned on SourceForge with the suggestive name of EclipseGraphviz. RC http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/08/03/graphviz-on-eclipse-first-cut/ Would you like an Eclipse-based development environment for composing Graphviz diagrams, for instance, an editor with syntax highlighting, on-the-fly validation and visualization? Or would you, as an Eclipse plug-in developer, like an easy way of producing nice looking diagrams by calling Graphviz from your own Eclipse application? Well, we have the ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/07/23/graphviz-support-in-eclipse/ UML has become the lingua franca for modeling applications using the object-oriented paradigm. People use UML in many different ways (see the post on UML modes), ranging from as a communication tool to as a full fledged programming language that supports full code generation. This last way of using UML ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/06/01/full-code-generation-in-uml-from-the-class-state-and-activity-diagrams/ One notable benefit of model-driven development that is often underrated is improved reuse. This is a direct consequence of appropriate separation of concerns promoted by this development approach. The more intertwined concerns are when addressed in a piece of code, the harder it is to reuse that piece of code. ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/05/30/model-driven-development-improves-reuse/ One key aspect of MDA is platform independence. However, even some of the brightest people in our industry misunderstand what platform independence means in MDA. Platform independence has a different meaning in MDA than it has, for instance, in Java. Java promotes platform-independence by providing a common environment that insulates the ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/05/22/platform-independence-in-mda/ On his bliki, Martin Fowler eloquently describes the three different modes in which UML can be used: UML as sketch, UML as blueprint and UML as programming language. Let's revisit the different modes from the perspective of tools for the job. UML as sketch Description: In this mode, UML is essentially ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/05/12/uml-modes-and-tools/ Even though a textual notation such as TextUML is much more productive when creating UML models, the graphical notation is still better for a high-level overview. So, for the next milestone of the TextUML Toolkit, the main feature planned is a model visualizer using the conventional graphical notation of UML. The ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/05/06/graphical-notation-in-the-textuml-toolkit/ It has been suggested that it is often the case that non-Java developers are not familiar with Eclipse-based products. Thus, we have made available to Windows users a single-click download option containing only the essential plug-ins from the basic Eclipse platform, EMF and UML2, plus the TextUML Toolkit itself. ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/05/03/textuml-toolkit-as-a-single-download/ There hasn't been a post here for a while, but there is a good reason for that: we are glad to announce that we now have an actual web site (go see for yourself) and have simultaneously made the first public release! TextUML Toolkit 1.0 M1 is the first milestone ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/05/02/a-website-and-the-first-release/ (This is the third and last installment in this series. If you haven't done it yet, read the first and second installments before you proceed) Let's start by recalling the main points we wanted to make in the previous posts. In summary, we should strive for addressing concerns as independently as ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/04/15/where-we-are-coming-from-part-iii/ (This is the second installment in a series of posts that explains what we think is wrong with the current state of affairs in the mainstream business application development industry, and how we plan to fix it. If you haven't done it yet, read the first post first) We finished the ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/04/07/where-we-are-coming-from-part-ii/ (This is the first installment in a series of posts that will explain what we think is wrong with the current state of affairs in the mainstream business application development industry, and how we plan to fix it) One term that often appears in a conversation between two developers deciding how ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/03/31/where-we-are-coming-from-part-i/ Thanks for checking us out. We are busy working hard on a tool that will bring software development productivity to a whole new level. At some point this summer, we will release a full fledged model-driven development tool, with support for model execution and complete code generation. Before that, as ... http://abstratt.com/blog/2007/03/23/the-road-ahead-of-us/