Jérôme BENOIS's Weblog "MDE 2.0 :)"

DSL à l'aide des technologies Eclipse Modeling

Jérôme — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 11:10:00 +0200

Hier soir, j'ai présenté une session sur les DSL à l'aide des technologies Eclipse Modeling au Poitou-Charentes JUG. L'idée était d'expliquer les fondements d'un MDA de nouvelle génération basé sur les langages de domaines. Voici mes slides :

20100629 dsl-poitou-charentes-jug

View more presentations from jerome.benois.

Vidéo de la soirée Easyant et Ivy

Jérôme — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 17:31:00 +0100

La vidéo de la soirée Easyant et Ivy au Poitou-Charentes JUG est disponible sur parleys :

2nd Birthday of ParisJUG

Jérôme — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:45:00 +0100

I just back in my Home Office from a two days trip to Paris.I went to the second birthday of ParisJUG. Thanks and bravo to Antonio and all the ParisJUG team for the organization! It was a special event about the Open-Source revolution.
All French JUG leaders are came specially for this event. Orianne and Jerome Petit, the Poitou-Charentes JUG leaders, announced that we would organize an event in September: The Beach JUG (aka Le JUG de la Plage!) The event will take place in La Rochelle on the French west coast. This will be an opportunity for me to talk about Model Driven. If you are interested to come and talk, ping me, I will redirect.

The evening starting by an excellent Keynote presented by Sacha Labourey. He shares with us his experience as Open-Source committer on JBoss, then CTO and co-GM of the RedHat / JBoss company. And he detailed some best practices for creating an Open-Source and succeed in life (in Open-Source world ;)) I liked this phrase: "We are free and we don't suck ! "
Then there is a surprise, a mystery guest, the buzz turned the whole day on Twitter, tracks from Clara Morgane to Nicolas Sarkozy:

And finally, it's Marc Fleury, the JBoss Founder who became!
I had the honor to discuss with Marc around a glass of French wine! Marc has a really cool life, since it sold JBoss. He came back to Europe, in Madrid and spend full time with his children and used his free time to study Economy... a huge topic to me...
Just after the Keynote, Etienne Juliot presented a quickie before almost 400 people. It explain how Obeo joined the Eclipse Foundation as a Strategic Member and how to build a viable Business Model based on the Eclipse ecosystem.

I remember two messages: "Do it!" and "Professional Open-Source is not a Bisounours World", which reaches the Sacha opinion. Indeed, Etienne told us that it is very difficult to monetize open source technologies in order to build a solid software company. He explained how Obeo has managed to build a clear strategy and build a solid business model.

The evening then continued with a third half-time with almost 120 people, the moment to talk with many good Open-Source Guys!

Building an Enterprise Repository with EMF, CDO and EEF Technologies

Jérôme — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:48:00 +0100

Last week, we have delivered a prototype of an enterprise repository for a big french insurance company.

What's an enterprise repository?

An enterprise repository can create a multi-dimensionnal space involving all components of an information system. The implementation of such a tool is part of a governance policy on a large scale information system.

The figure above illustrates how a repository is used to align the IT vision on the Business dimension. This tool aggregates all the foundations of the Information System and can easily navigate to this logical view in order to study changes impacts, and define transformations and modernization plans, ...

In our case most of the information already existed, so we decided to create connectors to feed the repository. Existing information are generally collected from :

Existing tools : in fact several tools are used to manage information system, but each tools are isolate. In example we have develop a connector to extract the content of MEGA Repository and add the capability to reference this content with other contents.
Legacy systems : Database schemas, existing application (Cobol, Natural, Java,...)

Technically, we use the Eclipse Modeling technologies:

EMF: to define metamodels
CDO: to store and share our big model
EEF: to provide editor and sexy properties views

So, A great opportunity for the Obeo Guys to contribute to the CDO project!

In fact, with Gonzague we developed a new feature, the "push mode" aka the local transaction support. We have carried out in collaboration with Eike, our CDO mentor

Some details about this feature:

In CDO, the publishing workflow in the repository is:

Open CDO editor
Add some changes
Save your editor
CDO sends changes in the repository

Our contribution introduces the concept of Local Transaction. It adds a step to this worflow:

Open CDO editor
Add some changes
Save your editor
CDO store all deltas in a local binary file
When the user invokes the "Push" action, CDO sends all changes in the repository.

With this feature, we can also restart eclipse, and restore your local changes later on a new session.

Special thanks for Gonzague and Eike for their works! (#298055,#298178,#298568,#297967,#298334)

The next step, is use GMF with Obeo Designer facilities to provide dedicated viewpoints for each kind of actors.

Soirée EasyAnt et Ivy

Jérôme — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:50:00 +0100

Jeudi 17 Décembre je présenterai avec Xavier Hanin (Project Lead d'Apache Ivy) et Jean-Louis Boudard (Project Lead d'EasyAnt) une session consacrée à EasyAnt et Ivy,

Pour vous mettre l'eau à la bouche, voici le plan :

Nous introduirons les principales problématiques liées :

à la gestion de dépendances dans les projets
et au processus de construction d'application

Nous présenterons la solution EasyAnt basée sur les standards Apache Ant et Apache Ivy afin de répondre aux questions suivantes :

Qu'attend-t-on d'un outil de build ?
La gestion de dépendances logicielles à quoi ça sert ?
Est-ce que ça peut vraiment me faire gagner du temps sur mes projets ?
Et quelle est la réponse apportée par EasyAnt dans ce contexte ?
Est-ce difficile à mettre en oeuvre ?
Comment cela s'intègre t'il dans les outils (IDE, outil d'intégration continue ...)
Quid du débat EasyAnt vs Maven ?

C'est autant de questions auxquelles nous essayerons de répondre à travers un panel de démonstrations et de retours d'expérience, en s'attardant sur le fonctionnement d'EasyAnt et d'Ivy, leurs forces et faiblesses, mais aussi en donnant des indications pratiques et pragmatiques sur leurs mise en oeuvre.

Date et lieu :

jeudi 17 décembre 2009 à 18h30
Lieu : Pépinière d'entreprises du Niortais
Adresse : 3 rue Archimède 79000 Niort

Pour s'inscrire : envoyer un mail à : team@poitoucharentesjug.org.

La conférence sera suivie d'un buffet pour terminer la soirée par un moment de convivialité offert par SERLI. Puis comme d'habitude, nous finirons la soirée en centre-ville pour partager quelques bières entre juggers

Venez nombreux !

Quelques news Spring et Acceleo

Jérôme — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:00:00 +0200

Je suis très heureux d'annonçer la sortie imminente de la nouvelle édition de "Spring par la pratique". La parution en librairie est prévu pour le 9 Juillet 2009 et la version ebook est d'ores et déjà disponible.

Un grand bravo à Thierry Templier, Arnaud Cogoluègnes et Julien Dubois qui ont fait un travail de titan sur cette nouvelle version. Vous y trouverez toutes les nouveautés de Spring 2.5 et Spring 3.0 ainsi que des nouveaux chapitres sur Spring Batch ou encore Spring DM.

J'ai eu l'occasion de participer modestement à cette aventure et de contribuer une annexe traitant de l'industrialisation des développements Spring dans Eclipse. Vous devez vous doutez que cette industrialisation est basée sur une approche dirigée par les modèles et utilise le générateur Acceleo

Cette nouvelle version atteignant pas moins de 680 pages, les annexes ne seront pas inclus dans l'édition. Mais elles seront bientôt disponibles pour tous en téléchargement sur le site dédié créé pour l'occasion : http://www.springparlapratique.org. La listes des annexes :

Annexe A : SpringIDE
Annexe B : Développement OSGi dans Eclipse
Annexe C : Industrialisation des développements Spring dans Eclipse

Aussi, je profite de ce billet pour relayer l'annonçe de Freddy sur un événement à ne pas manquer "Eclipse Acceleo Day". La communauté Acceleo se retrouvera le 10 Juillet 2009 à Nantes. Cette événement se déroulera pendant les 10ème RMLL. Vous trouverez toutes les informations ainsi que le programme complet ici.

Inscrivez-vous vite, il ne reste que peu de temps avant la clôture des inscriptions !

Salon Solutions Linux / Open-Source 2009

Jérôme — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 07:34:00 +0200

Il y a maintenant une semaine que je suis rentré du salon Solution Linux / Open-Source 2009. Cette dixième édition se déroulait cette année Porte de Versailles. Après 5 années en tant que visiteur, ce fut l'occasion pour moi de passer de l'autre coté de la "barrière" pour devenir exposant et conférencier aux cotés de mes collègues Etienne et Stéphane. Nous étions localisé sur le stand d'Alliance Libre, le pôle d'expertise en logiciels libres Nantais auquel nous sommes membres.
Durant ces 3 jours, j'ai pu présenter les produits Obeo, échanger avec différents acteurs du libre. Mais aussi voir quelques autres membres de l'OSSGTP, ainsi que mes anciens collègues qui ont lancés en direct leur nouvelle plateforme de Cloud Computing Faascape. Ce fut aussi l'occasion de faire le plein de T-Shirts Geek, outil indispensable au télétravailleur que je suis

Mardi dernier, j'ai présenté pour la première fois le projet Eclipse Papyrus, le nouveau modeleur UML de la fondation Eclipse sur lequel je contribue. Voici les slides de la présentation :

JavaEE Productivity Tour à Nantes

Jérôme — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:08:00 +0100

Un évènement dans l'Ouest à ne pas manquer !

JavaEE Productivity Tour co-organisé par Obeo, ProxiAD et SpringSource s'arrête à Nantes, au Stade de la Beaujoire le mardi 7 avril, de 9h00 à 13h00.

A cette occasion, nous partagerons avec vous notre vision commune de la problématique plus que jamais actuelle de la productivité des développements JavaEE.

La grande plus value de cet évènement tient dans l’association autour d’un même fil rouge de 3 spécialistes de la productivité qui vous apporteront une vision complémentaire et intégrée des enjeux et solutions de la productivité en JavaEE. Les intervenants lors de cette matinée vous dresseront une vision globale et homogène de leviers de productivité d’un projet JavaEE. Ils se concentreront ensuite sur les bénéfices d’une cible technique performante et d’un environnement de développement adapté.

Nous aurons enfin le plaisir de nous retrouver autour d’un buffet à l’heure du déjeuner.

C’est gratuit, les places sont limitées et les inscriptions se passent Ici !

Eclipse Commiter Nomination and First Commit!

Jérôme — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 23:50:00 +0100

Since six month ago, I have been within Obeo in order to work on Model Driven technologies. Indeed I manage Obeo's contributions to the Eclipse Papyrus project.

During this period I worked on the Papyrus to improve wizards, properties views and the usability of class Diagram. I'm also participated to the preparation of the IP Process checking.

Since one month, The source code of Papyrus was hosted on Eclipse SVN repository here.

And Now, since Tuesday, I'm proud to announce that I have been nominated Eclipse Commiter for Eclipse Papyrus project! It is a great honor in my hacker's life And I will put best efforts to provide quality contributions.

Also I will talk about my work on Eclipse Papyrus project or other Eclipse technologies on this Blog or on my Twitter Micro-Blog (Don't hesitate to follow me!).

After this news, I commited my first official contribution as a commiter #263431. I refactored the Papyrus Outline and implemented a first version of the Model Explorer view in order allow the navigation in resources, model and diagrams. This view is based on the powerful Common Navigator Framework (aka CNF) :

The result here :

More screenshots on the Papyrus Wiki.

CNF is very generic and extensive framework. Indeed, it allow to provide with the eclipse extension mechanism:

content providers,
label providers,
filters,
actions,
sorters

I read some great articles to learn the CNF :

Minute of Papyrus Pre-Committing meeting!

Jérôme — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 22:01:00 +0100

Wednesday, I met the others commiters of the Eclipse Papyrus project. We have prepared an action plan to prepare the IPZilla process. As you can see a great week of work ahead! You can see the minute here:

One month in Obeo, The Model Driven Company!

Jérôme — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:58:00 +0200

I have been within Obeo for almost one month now. As expected, it is crazy, and exciting!

Exciting for several reasons, first because it's a new job with new challenges, and then for the followings:

Working at home: I begin my fifth year of work at home, with zero transport time, no tie.

I like this way of working! It's an ideal way to reconcile family life and work, we will see it when my son/daughter will be born in February

Working on Open-Source softwares: Some of you know that I have been working for the Hervé Group as Project Manager, and lately for Argia-Engineering as CTO. This latest experience was focused on software architecture, and scalability design of big e-commerce platform and MDA consulting,...

As I am an intensive user of Open standards and Open-source softwares such as GNU/Linux, Apache, Tomcat, Java, PostgreSQL, Spring, Eclipse, Ant, Ivy, Hudson,... I think that Open-Source must a win-win model. Thus, I am an active contributor to mailing-list, forum, documentation, experience sharing , bug reporting, or even more source code contribution. It is this approach that led me to interest me to severals Open-Source project like Acceleo, on which I contributed actively and became commiter. This great diving phase in the Open-Source world offers me an opportunity to capitalize in depth experience. As shifting to the Open source world became obvious in my mind, Moving to Obeo was a great opportunity for me!

Since one month, I am pleased to work on a new big Open-Source project : the new UML2 the new UML2 modeler hosted by Eclipse Foundation called Eclipse Papyrus . This big rebuild of Papyrus project (http://papyrusuml.org) is aimed at integrating several contributions on a solid and flexible BackBone. In this project, Standards is another important point, we want support and respect 100% of the OMG standards. In the first sprint to give a first version of code source for the IPZilla incubation process, we focused on implementing the Class Diagram. Thus I discover and start to use the Graphical Modeling Framework (see the first screenshot of this collective work) to improve Class Diagram:

I promise you to communicate about this on this blog!

Yesterday, it was the Acceleo JEE Module Sprint'08. It was an opportunity to meet members of the community and define the roadmap of this module. It was as deep dive meeting, we worked on severals tracks by small team. And you can see the Minute here.

In the coming months, i think meet some famous Eclipse committers like Ed Merks,Tom Schindl,... and participate to important event like Solution Linux, eclipse DemoCamp, maybe Eclipse Summit Europe or EclipseCon ...

Working in an innovative and visionary team: I met the team consists of thirty persons including 4 project leaders and 8 official commiters on Eclipse projects: ATL, QVT, MTL, M2M, EMF-Compare, STP, SCA-Tools, ...

And I discovered the offer of Obeo. I known Acceleo since two or three years ago, it's a very cool technology. But it's only a portion of the Iceberg. I enjoyed to discover a big Model Driven Platform called Agility. It can help you to build complete software factories and migration factories. It provide very impressive features!

In conclusion, I just invite you to take a look to Obeo and contact me if you have any question about product portfolio.

Bug Day on Hibernate Module !

Jérôme — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:57:00 +0200

This morning, i tracked strange bug on the Acceleo Hibernate module :

 __________________                 ______________________
| CLASS_MANY_01_BI |<-- * {-} 1 -->| CLASS_MANY_01_BI_END |
|__________________|               |______________________|

The generator created this bloc in Class_Many_01_BI_END.hbm.xml :

<set name="source" inverse="true">
        <key column="FK__TARGET_ID"/>            
        <one-to-many class="org.acceleo.hibernate.bug.entities.Class_Many_01_BI"/>
</set>

But the correct mapping seems to be :

<set name="source" inverse="true">       
        <key column="FK_CLASS_MANY_01_BI_END_TARGET_ID"/>            
        <one-to-many class="org.acceleo.hibernate.bug.entities.Class_Many_01_BI"/>
</set>

I wrote a basic unit test to detect the problem :

@Test public void testMany_01_BI() throws Exception{
        Class_Many_01_BI_END target = new Class_Many_01_BI_END();
        getSession().save(target);
                
        Class_Many_01_BI source = new Class_Many_01_BI();
        source.setTarget(target);
        getSession().save(source);
                
        getSession().flush();
        getSession().clear();
                
        target = (Class_Many_01_BI_END)getSession().load(Class_Many_01_BI_END.class, target.getId());
        assertNotNull(target);
        assertNotNull(target.getSource());
        assertEquals("Bad mapping detected!", 1, target.getSource().size());
}

And after short debate on #acceleo IRC channel, thanks Gougou, i added my fix on trunk here :

svn diff -r1655:1656 svn://svn.forge.objectweb.org/svnroot/acceleo/trunk/modules/community/uml21/jee/trunk

This problem gives me to think how to improve this module. The "org.acceleo.module.pim.uml21.gen.jee.tests" non-regression plan is a good point to guarantee stability and the module consistency. Indeed, it's good tools but i think we could add a unit test suite to check all uses cases defines by the non-regression plan. And, we could detect others problems like my bug of the day

SpringOne 2008 coming soon ...

Jérôme — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 12:37:00 +0200

SpringOne coming soon, I'm impatient!

I made a first difficult choice because there is many interesting topics :

Day One
- Keynote by Rod Johnson
- Spring 2.5 on the Way to 3.0 by Juergen Hoeller
- OSGi Programming Model by Adrian Colyer
- Spring Dynamic Modules for OSGi by Costin Leau
- Five Aspects You Don't Know About by Alef Arendsen
- Enterprise Integration Patterns with Spring by Mark Fisher

Day Two
- Keynote by Adrian Colyer
- Introduction to the Springsource Application Platform by Andy Wilkinson
- Applying the Spring Frameworks for Model-Driven Architecture by Jan Ypma
- Inside SpringSource Application Platform by Rob Harrop
- Classloading in OSGi by Frederik Santens or JavaServerFaces - The Biggest Loser of Java Web Frameworks? by Jeremy Grelle
- Spring Architecture and Best Practices by Eberhard Wolff or Spring Web Flow 2.0 Deep Dive by Keith Donald

The "Applying the Spring Frameworks for Model-Driven Architecture" session will provide an opportunity to exchange around the Spring Acceleo module

Spring Application Platform based on OSGi

Jérôme — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:45:00 +0200

After the next release announcement here of the excellent Spring Dynamic Modules (Spring OSGi), Spring Source announce the new Application Server based on OSGi (on Spring-DM). It based on the Eclipse Equinox and Apache Tomcat technologies. It's very good news, this further confirms the position of Spring as a same level of IBM, Oracle/BEA, JBoss...

I think OSGi technology is the best to build next generation of enterprise application !

Announcements :

on infoQ on SpringFramework.org

Many interesting blog post :

introducing-the-springsource-application-platform completing-the-picture-spring-osgi-and-the-springsource-application-platform running-spring-applications-on-osgi-with-the-springsource-application-platform programmer-guide application-platform-deployment-options

Also, Spring source continues its development in france ... perhaps soon training and support to french around Spring Application Platform. Two in interviews of Julien here :

on TV4IT :

on ArchitectesIT here

JEE-Spring Acceleo Module Screencast

Jérôme — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 18:12:00 +0100

I created four screencast about last enhancements in JEE-Spring Acceleo Module :

Here you can discover how to create an empty project based on Maven directory layout. It contains a default UML model with Acceleo Business Profile already applied, and an Ivy configuration file used to define required dependencies.

You must install my IvyDE and JEE Acceleo Module snapshots from this update-site. And you must add ivysettings.xml in your home directory and define reference in Ivy eclipse preferences.

Here You can learn how to use Topcased UML modeler to create <<Service>>, <<Dto>>, <<Entity>> and <<Dao>> artefacts.

Here You can learn how to use JEE-Spring Acceleo Module in order to generate java source code, unit test, spring and hibernate configuration files. This target server platform is based on Spring Framework, Hibernate and the Hessian Remoting protocol.

Here How to develop unit tests and fill user code blocks

View dependency graph with IvyDE

Jérôme — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:13:00 +0100

At the moment I am working on a new eclipse project creation wizard to facilitate collaborative development of business services. The goal is provide a default project layout, with basic UML model, and pre-configured build system. I use Topcased for UML modeling and the JEE Spring Acceleo module to generate source code.

And I'm interesting to configure a dependency manager. But i'm not really satisfied by Maven, because is too unstable... (I plan to explain my point of view in another post)

Thus, I began to explore several alternatives. I think I will go on a solution based on Apache Ivy!

Indeed, after reading and testing EasyAnt Proof Of Concept, here I am fan. I advise you to read the following post on Xavier's Weblog, the creator of Ivy.

I like Ivy because it is easy to use and very powerful, and it provides a plug eclipse IvyDE which is really nice and very practical!

Tonight, I decided to make a modest participation in the project by creating a dependency view that allows you to view the dependencies graph. I was inspired by source code of the Q4E Maven plugin. I discovered the Eclipse Zest Apis, it's a marvel to make layouting, the result below

JEE-Spring Acceleo Module [EN]

Jérôme — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:16:00 +0100

I'm proud to announce the first official release of Acceleo module generator for "Spring Framework". It is available with the latest version of Acceleo 2.2.

The "JEE / Spring" Acceleo module uses UML2 models with stereotypes in order to generate applications based on the Spring Framework.

It generates applications with multi-tiers architecture with the following layers:

User Interface layer
Data Transfert Objects layer
Business Services layer
Data Acces Objects layer

Presentation of the target technology:

Spring is a lightweight container, which provides similar infrastructure than the Java EE platform. It provides the ability to create / instanciate objects and manage their dependencies. The major advantage of this approach is the possibility to exclusively use POJO (Plain Old Java Objects, objects without any reference of specifics Java interfaces). It also offers the ability to realize loosely coupled between all application layers by using together the dependency injection and the programming with interface. Several features such as security or transactions can be declaratively specified in the XML configuration file, ... Even with the new features of the version 2 of Spring, the major drawback of this framework is the usage of XML files in order to specify dependencies. These files, seems sometimes to be complex to write and maintain.

Hibernate Hibernate is a framework used with the Java EE platform to manage object / relational mapping. This paradigm defines how to persist objects in a relational database.

Modeling :

The JavaEE-Spring generator allows to use UML 2.1 models with specifics stereotypes in order to identify artefacts of the different application layers. You must use a modeler supporting by this standard. Topcased is this kind of this tool and The Acceleo website provides a bundle containing Acceleo and Topcased.

Simplified Architecture

The figure above shows the stereotypes that would specify a semantic on UML elements. According to the Java EE architecture, various stereotypes are provided:

The <<Entity>> stereotype applies on business domain classes;
The <<Dao>> stereotype applies on data access classes and, it provides read and write methods for business entities;
The <<Service>> stereotype applies on business service classes;
The <<Transactional>> stereotype applies on operations of business services in order to specify transactional aspect. Both properties: "isolation" and "propagation" can be use to define the transaction strategy;
The <<Remote>> stereotype applies on business services operations in order to publish as Web Service;
The <<Dto>> stereotype applies on data transfert objects classes, often used as return parameter operation of business service.

Features generator

In service layer:

Generate all Spring configuration files
Easy to use data transfert object in order to provide mediation layer
Transaction Management with aspect-oriented programming
Lazy loading support for all objects in the same transaction (design pattern "ThreadLocal Session")
Can publish operation of business service as a Web service using XFire
JUnit tests

In persistence layer:

The generator applies Hibernate best practices to provide a better productivity and great performance.

Easy browsing on business objects

Subclassing
1-1, 1-*, *-* associations
Unidirectional and bidirectional navigability
Optimisations
Usage of POJOs

Relational Mapping

Cache handling on persisted data
3NF SQL
Integrity constraints
Concurrent accesses
Technical identifier

Date access layer

No dependency between DTOs and Hibernate
Advanced search methods
Transaction handling
JUnit tests

Demonstration :

The installation of generator is detailed on the pages installation of modules.

Install the demonstration project using the menu "Project ..", then select "JEE-Spring Demo" from the menu "Examples / Acceleo

The wizard creates a new project "org.acceleo.sample.demo.spring" in your workspace.

The directory src contains the generated sources;
The directory resources contains spring and hibernate configurations files;
The directory tests contains unit tests;
The directory lib contains required libraries;
The directory model contains :
- The files conception.uml and conception.umldi are the application model;
- The files profile.uml and profile.umldi are UML profile used to extend UML and handle the generation process;
The file spring.chain used to launch generation process;
The file spring.properties used to specify generation properties;

The conception.umldi model described below:

The <<Entity>> Product defines the concept of products, it contains the properties name and color,
The <<Dao>> ProductsDao is responsible for reading and updating of product objects. The DAOs systematically implements CRUD (Create-Read-Update-Delete) methods. Thus you should not model these methods. However, it is possible to add operations such asfindProductByColor;
The <<Service>> ProductsServices contains the following operations:
- getListOfProducts : returns the list of all products;
- getProduct : returns one product from given identifier. As this method is <<Remote>> and will be published as a Web service;
- addProduct : addes given product. This method is <<Transactional>>, if an error occured the database will not be updated and will be therefore incorporates;
- updateProduct : updates a given product;
- removeProduct : deletes a given product;

The Dependencies modelled means:

From <<Service>> to <<Dao>> : the <<Dao>> object must be injected in service object.
From <<Dao>> to <<Entity>> : the <<Dao>> must be responsible for managing the dependent <<Entity>>.

Some examples of generated files:

The file src/org/acceleo/sample/demo/spring/services/I_ProductsServices.java is the Java interface of service:

The file src/org/acceleo/sample/demo/spring/services/I_ProductsServicesWebService.java is the Java interface of Web service and publishes only operations stereotypes with the <<Remote>> stereotype;

The file src/org/acceleo/sample/demo/spring/services/impl/ProductsServicesImpl.java is the Java class of service which implements both interfaces of service:

The file resources/META-INF/spring/component.xml is the main Spring configuration file. It includes configuration files used by all application layers:

The file resources/META-INF/spring/org.acceleo.sample.demo.spring/layer-services.xml is the Spring configuration file used to describe beans of business services layer:

It remains to be done & Contribute! :

Navigation layer based on Spring MVC
Spring Web Flow Support
GWT Support
Generation Spring Dynamic Modules (ex spring-osgi) configuration files to use all the power of OSGI platform

Module Acceleo JEE-Spring [FR]

Jérôme — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 19:26:00 +0100

J'ai le plaisir de vous annoncer la première version officielle du module de génération Acceleo pour "Spring Framework". Il est disponible avec la toute nouvelle version d'Acceleo 2.2.

Le module Acceleo "JEE/Spring" se base sur une modélisation UML2 stéréotypée afin de générer des applications basée sur le socle technique Spring.

Il génère des applications respectant une architecture en couches :

Interface utilisateur
Objets de transferts
Services métiers
Accès au données

Présentation de la cible technique :

Spring est un conteneur dit « léger », c'est-à-dire une infrastructure similaire à un serveur d'application JEE. Il assure la logique de création des objets et la gestion leurs dépendances. L'intérêt majeur d'un tel conteneur réside essentiellement dans la possibilité de n'utiliser exclusivement que des POJO (objets java simple n'implémentant aucunes interfaces spécifiques). Il offre aussi la possibilité de réaliser un coupable faible entre les couches applicatives avec le programmation par interface tout en permettant de spécifier des traitements par déclaration au niveau de l'assemblage des dépendances; traitements tels que la sécurité, les transactions,... L'inconvénient majeur souvent avançé par ses détracteurs reste néanmoins l'utilisation de fichiers XML parfois complexes à maintenir afin de définir les dépendances.

Hibernate est un framework utilisable avec la plateforme JEE et permettant de gérer le mapping objet / relationnel, paradigme consistant à persister des objets dans une base de données relationelle.

Modélisation :

Le générateur JEE-Spring permet l'exploitation de modèles UML 2.1 enrichis d'un certain nombre de stéréotypes spécifiques et correspondant aux couches applicatives. Vous devez utiliser un modeleur compatible avec cette norme, Topcased correspondant à un outil de ce type et étant fournit avec la version bundle d'Acceleo.

Schéma d'architecture simplifié

La figure ci-dessus illustre les stéréotypes permettant de définir une sémantique particulière aux éléments UML. Dans le contexte d'architecture JEE, sont mis à disposition les différents stéréotypes suivants :

Le stéréotype <<Entity>> s'applique aux classes du domaine métier;
Le stéréotype <<Dao>> s'applique aux classes d'accès aux données implémentant la logique de sauvegarde et de restauration des entités du domaine;
Le stéréotype <<Service>> s'applique aux classes dîtes service métier ou encore traitement métier;
Le stéréotype <<Transactionnal>> s'applique aux opérations des services métiers afin de leur spécifier un comportement transactionnel. Les deux propriétés "isolation" et "propagation" sont offertes afin de préciser la stratégie de gestions des transactions;
Le stéréotype <<Remote>> s'applique aux opérations des services métiers afin de les exposer en tant que service web;
Le stéréotype <<Dto>> s'applique aux classes de transferts de données souvent utilisées en tant que paramètres de retour des méthodes de services.

Fonctionnalités du générateur

Au niveau de la couche de service :

Génération de l'ensemble des fichiers de configuration Spring
Possibilité d'utiliser des objets de transferts afin de constituer une couche de médiation
Gestion des transactions avec la programmation orientée aspect
Chargement paresseux des objets tout au long d'une même transaction (patron de conception "ThreadLocal Session")
Support de l'exposition de méthodes de services en tant que service Web à l'aide de l'outil XFire
Tests JUnit

Au niveau de la persistance :

Le générateur intègre les meilleures pratiques Hibernate afin de fournir une meilleure productivité et des performances optimales.

Navigation transparente entre les objets métiers

Héritage
Associations 1-1, 1-*, *-*
Navigabilité unidirectionnelle et bidirectionnelle
Optimisations
Utilisation de simples fichiers Java de type POJO

Mapping vers la base de données

Gestion du cache sur les données persistées
SQL en 3NF
Contraintes d'intégrité
Concurrence d'accès
Clef technique

Couche d'accès applicatif sur les données DAO

Couche dédiée à l'accès aux données et au requêtage
Pas de dépendance directe entre les objets métiers et Hibernate
Méthodes de recherche évoluées
Gestion des transactions
Tests JUnit

Démonstration :

L'installation du générateur est détaillée sur la page d'installation des modules.

Installez le projet de démonstration à l'aide du menu "Project ..", puis sélectionnez "JEE-Spring Demo" dans le menu "Examples/Acceleo" :

L'assistant crée un nouveau projet "org.acceleo.sample.demo.spring" dans votre espace de travail.

Le répertoire src contient les sources générés;
Le répertoire resources contient les fichiers de configuration de Spring et d'Hibernate;
Le répertoire tests contient les tests unitaires;
Le répertoire lib contient les librairies utiles au bon fonctionnement du projet;
Le répertoire model contient :
- Les fichiers conception.uml et conception.umldi correspondant au modèle de l'application;
- Les fichiers profile.uml et profile.umldi correspondant au profile UML utilisé pour la génération;
Le fichier spring.chain permettant de lancer les opérations de génération;
Le fichier spring.properties permettant de spécifier les options de génération;

Le modèle conception.umldi ci-dessous décrit :

Un <<Entity>> Product représentant la notion de produits, est composé des propriétés name et color,
Un <<Dao>> ProductsDao chargé des opérations de lecture et mise à jour des instance de produits. Les DAOs proposent systématiquement les méthodes CRUD (Create-Read-Update-Delete), ces dernières ne devant pas être modélisées. Il est toutefois possible d'ajouter des opérations tels que findProductByColor;
Un <<Service>> ProductsServices proposant les opérations métiers suivantes :
- getListOfProducts : fournit la liste complète des produits
- getProduct : retourne un produit à partir d'un identifiant donné. On notera que cette méthode est <<Remote>> et sera donc publiée en tant que service Web.
- addProduct : ajoute un produit. On notera que cette méthode est <<Transactional>>, en cas d'erreur de traitement la base de donnée ne sera pas modifiée et restera donc intègre.
- updateProduct : met à jour un produit
- removeProduct : supprime un produit

Les dépendances modélisées représentent :

Du <<Service>> vers le <<Dao>> : l'instance du <<Dao>> doit être injectée dans le service.
Du <<Dao>> vers l'<<Entity>> : le <<Dao>> a la responsabilité de gérer l'<<Entity>> dépendante.

Quelques exemples de fichiers générés :

Le fichier src/org/acceleo/sample/demo/spring/services/I_ProductsServices.java constitue l'interface Java du service :

Le fichier src/org/acceleo/sample/demo/spring/services/I_ProductsServicesWebService.java constitue l'interface Java du service Web chargée d'exposer uniquement les méthodes <<Remote>> du service :

Le fichier src/org/acceleo/sample/demo/spring/services/impl/ProductsServicesImpl.java constitue la classe Java chargée d'implémenter les deux interfaces du service :

Le fichier resources/META-INF/spring/component.xml correspond au fichier principal de configuration de Spring. Ce dernier inclut l'ensemble des fichiers de configuration des différentes couches applicatives :

Le fichier resources/META-INF/spring/org.acceleo.sample.demo.spring/layer-services.xml correspond au fichier de configuration de Spring définissant les objets de la couche de services métiers :

Reste à faire & Contribuez ! :

Couche de navigation basée sur Spring MVC
Support de Spring Web Flow
Support de la technologie GWT.
Génération des fichiers de configuration pour Spring Dynamic Modules (ex spring-osgi)

Sharengo Summer University 2007

Jérôme — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 08:07:00 +0200

Sharen'Go is the community project initiated by Argia-Engineering, aiming to organize, explain and work on principles of sharing between differents companies in the context of IT but oriented on the core business (not IT related). In this context, we intensely use models to build the reference frame of Sharen'Go business components.

Last week, during Sharen'Go Summer University, i was speaker during 3 days on workshop to present tools used to build new components and projects.

The sharen'Go tools stack used by our developments teams are as follows:

ABS means Advanced Build System is a component oriented toolchain. It's an ant script generator from project model representation. (similar to Maven POM)
- Presentation goals:
  - Describe what we know about ABS
  - Introduce ABS usage for development
- Agenda:
  - Introduce ABS usage for development
  - What's ABS?
  - How to use ABS?
  - Short demonstration

You can see slides: "Use ABS to Build project Part I":

Sharen'Go MDE tools (the next generation after PragMaTic): This presentation show usage of Topcased and Acceleo to develop simple application based on Spring / XFire / Hibernate / Velocity architecture.
- Presentation goals:
  - Describe what we know about Model Driven Engineering features
  - Develop a useful application
- Agenda :
  - How to use UML model?
  - How to generate code?
  - How to develop useful application?
  - Dealing with Web Services!

You can see slides: "Use ABS to Build project Part II":

Another slides of others workshop about project management and methodology are here: SSU2007

Acceleo Feedbacks

Jérôme — Fri, 18 May 2007 11:02:00 +0200

MDE evangelist by nature, convinced by Models Centric Approach, I use in an intensive way the tools of modelings and generations since 2000 year.

After used AndroMDA, I created my own tool PragMaTic in order to offer a more flexible solution and more simpler to apprehend. And to finish, Acceleo appeared in the Open-Source landscape !

Convinced by the power of this new platform, and the dynamism of Acceleo Team, I decided to join this community. I rewrote with ease the majority of my generators towards this platform. I appreciate the richness of documentation, as well as the quality of integration to the Eclipse platform. I use Topcased and Acceleo for UML2 modeling & generation. I also use it to generate code from DSL, but i prefer usage of concrete syntax (see TCS) than graphic modeler like GMF.