EMF Advantages?

[Fintan Conway]

Hi All,
At the moment I am using a UML modelling tool to create my UML diagrams, and to generate Java code. I then use Eclipse to fill in code for the method bodies.
What advantage would using the EMF facility in Eclipse give me? As far as I understand the UML modelling is not as comprehensive as dedicated UML tools.
Many thanks for your help,
Fintan

[Pradeep bhatt]

http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Using%20EMF/using-emf.html

[Frank Budinsky]

Originally posted by Fintan Conway:
Hi All,
At the moment I am using a UML modelling tool to create my UML diagrams, and to generate Java code. I then use Eclipse to fill in code for the method bodies.
What advantage would using the EMF facility in Eclipse give me? As far as I understand the UML modelling is not as comprehensive as dedicated UML tools.
Many thanks for your help,
Fintan

Fintan,
EMF can generate much more of your implementation code, and it integrates the modeling and programming parts of the job especially well. If you read chapter 2, I think you'll get the idea.
Frank.

[Java Joe]

I picked up this book at the bookstore about 10 days ago, and have read through about half of it. I was not aware of the EMF before this, and proceeded to download the missing parts needed for using this with eclipse.
Most of the authors work for IBM - the origin of Eclipse, and the design of what they have done looks very clean - It will take some real working with before I can feel comfortable with though.
At least in the first half of the book, the ties of Java-XML- and UML are explained and how the Model ties them together with their own XML called Ecore for capturing the model. I have started to see the design picture which makes sense so far - and the ability to use a simple set of UML makes sense.
It does seem that the current status of EMF is an early stage, and has room to grow - which they state will be slow steps-which is probably a good way to approach this.
I am very intrigued with the idea of the code generation, and once I get the time to sit down with it in a working mode I can comment better on its effectiveness.
[ September 23, 2003: Message edited by: Java Joe ]

[Bhushan Jawle]

Thanks for the link Pradeep

[Joe Pluta]

FB: EMF can generate much more of your implementation code, and it integrates the modeling and programming parts of the job especially well.
Frank, I'm a big believer in code generation; that's been my primary focus for many years now. My current tool generates a number of different kinds of code - modifications to an RPG program, an XML file that defines the UI interface, and JSPs. I do all my work on a midrange computer, and my models are stored in an RDB. One of the things that I use a lot are "snippets", code fragments with plug in values.
How do you generate your code? Where do you store the base templates that you draw from when you go to generate a Java class?
Joe

[Frank Budinsky]

Joe,
Included in the EMF project is a template-based code generation framework called JET. JET itself, while packaged along with EMF, is actually a general purpose framework that is independent of EMF and is being used for several other non-EMF purposes. There are two eclipse corner articles about JET that you might want to look at. The first article is a basic introduction. The second one describes how to use the generator framework classes to generate code.
As far as template location is concerned, the EMF generator uses compiled forms of the templates (they're JSP-like things), but users can request the generator use dynamic templates and specify a template directory where they provide overrides of any of the templates that they want to change. This is covered in chapter 11 of the book.
Frank.

[Matthew Phillips]

Java Joe,
We don't have many rules at Javaranch, but our display name policy is one of them. Please read this policy and change your display name to comply with it if you wish to continue posting. Thanks.
You can change your display name here.