openArchitectureWare / News: Recent posts

The openArchitectureWare Team is proud to announce the relaunch of the official project homepage http://www.openArchitectureWare.org. The new homepage is based on the Geeklog (http://www.geeklog.net) platform. By using this software users will be able to participate and communicate together in an easy way.

Some useful features of the openArchitectureWare.org platform are:
- easy article management
- file management area for downloads
- support forum
- full text search (including articles, downloads, discussion forum, comments)
- automatic email notifications for new articles, forum postings and comments
- image gallery... read more

The openArchitectureWare Team is developing the next major release 4.0 of the openArchitectureWare tool suite. This release will have some major refactorings and features.

Some of the new features are:
* UML2 support
* UML metamodel generated with oAW Metamodel Generator
* Integration of EMF (Eclipse Modeling Framework)
* Xpand 2 (e.g. featuring aspect-oriented templates)
* Workflow Engine
* Innovator AOX 2006 support
* Improved Metamodel Generator
* Refactored XMI Tool Mapping
* GEF Editor Generator
* Improved Eclipse integration
* Much more Documentation, tutorials, articles, migration guides... read more

The openArchitectureWare team plans some restructuring operations on the CVS repository. These operations are in preparation of the upcoming release 4.0.

As a first step current modules as opengenfw and misc have now a branch tag called 'B_v3'. Changes to the current 3.x release will be done on the branch.

The second step is deleting some old/unused directories from the repository:
* architectureware-eclipse
* oaw-emf
* emf-oaw
* appfam
* website
* genfwutil
* genfwutil_sf
* test-gen
* mmGenerator
* rel4
* mist/guifw
* misc/eclipse
* misc/eclipseTemplateBrowser
* misc/idedevl
* misc/gef
* core-workflow
* core-xpand2... read more

The release of 3.0.1 was slightly rushed:-)

It was found to cause several incompatabilities. So if you are working with an existing project, it is probably a good idea to stay with version 3.0.

I've added a corresponding notice to the 3.0.1 release notes.

The mdsdIDE plugin has been released as first beta version. The recent changes to Element/ModelElement from opengenfw have affected this package and have not been tested yet.

The openArchitectureWare framework for EMF has been released as an alpha version. It consists of:

*Workflow engine*
You could think of it as an Ant for MDSD processes.
It's also a bit like something is called modelbus, elsewhere.

*Xpand ported to EMF*
Xpand is a template language created for code generators.
Therefore it's very simple and effective. It provides

- expressions on core model level (not Java level)
- operations for ELists (filter, union, intersection, complement)
- invocation of features on ELists (e.g package.classifiers.name will return
a list of ecore:EString instances)
- simple constructs (FOREACH, IF, LET)
- FILE construct (Specify the file names, etc. inside the templates)
- Use to Helpers (static Java-Methods), to keep templates simple.
- etc.. ... read more

We now released version 3.0.1 of the Open Generator FrameWork and the Generator Utilities project. The significant change to version 3.0 is that some methods in class ModelElement were moved to its base class Element. The newest versions of other projects rely on this change.

The first release candidate of the Metamodel Generator project has been published. This release has been integrated and tested with the recently released version 3.0 of the Open Generator FrameWork (opengenfw) and Generator Utilities (genfwutil) project.

With the Metamodel Generator package it is possible to create the metaclasses for a specific DSL by defining the metamodel in UML and using the generator framework itself to generate them.... read more

Thanks to the hard work of project members and contributors we have finally released a new complete version. This includes the generator core, utilities, eclipse plugin, and example workspace packages. Documentation has been updated/written from scratch and translated. This version has been tested extensively over the last month and should be more than ready for production. Please report any bugs you might encounter.

The Open ArchitectureWare Generator FrameWork provides a suite of tools and components assisting with model driven software development built upon a modular MDA/MDD generator framework implemented in Java(TM) supporting arbitrary import (design) formats, meta models, and output (code) formats.

This tool is dedicated for developers who want to experiment, work and/or live the next step of computer engineering.... read more

The Open ArchitectureWare Generator FrameWork provides a suite of tools and components assisting with model driven software development built upon a modular MDA/MDD generator framework implemented in Java(TM) supporting arbitrary import (design) formats, meta models, and output (code) formats.

This tool is dedicated for developers who want to experiment, work and/or live the next step of computer engineering.... read more

Just a small update:

- includes latest opengenfw from CVS
- better template validation (messages and markers)
- fixed some encoding issues
- removed references to deprecated code

An example workspace has been released.
It contains everything you need to have to
get started with Eclipse and the Generator.

Have fun!

The utilities package has been released.
This package contains a lot of useful stuff, such as
* metamodel constraint utilities,
* various frontends (parsers)
* filters and path expressions,
* AND: documentation of all this !!!

Download it now!

This is the new version of the architectureware plugin for eclipse.
It's developed and tested on eclipse 3.0 M7 + M8.

Here are some features:
- easy project creation
- syntax highlighting for xpand templates
- intelligent code completion for xpand templates
- syntax error markers for xpand templates
- content outline for xpand templates
- ...

Ilja was so kind to provide another precompiled beta containing the latest changes: name based target selection in the text ui and the LET construct.

Though I've been lazy lately Ilja and our new Member Markus have commited some useful additions. Ilja has once again provided a precompiled package.

Ilja has implemented yet another small but highly useful feature (whose absence has annoyed lots of developers:-) While searching for protected regions it is now possible to configure file ignore patterns. It also excludes a lot of standard files by default. The changelog:

* Added new properties:

- de.bmiag.genfw.prresolver.excludes: You can provide a space separated list of file patterns to exclude, e.g.:
de.bmiag.genfw.prresolver.excludes=*.pdf *.tpl... read more

In case you hadn't noticed: Ilja did it. There is a new beta available for download featuring

\* de.bmiag.genfw.xpand.xpand: Added support for new tag NONL. The
next newline character\(s\) including the characters between NONL
and the newline character\(s\) will be removed.

This is the second step in providing better control over the amount of generated whitespace. Please test it. Feedback welcome.

Now that Ilja is gaining momentum he has packaged another release and finally started the Changelog I was too lazy to maintain:-) This is the first (and hopefully not last) entry:

2003-12-02 Ilja Pavkovic <noeskadu@gmx.de>

\* de.bmiag.genfw.\[io,xpand\]: Added support for indentation. You
can now define indentation behaviour at element DEFINE:
DEFINE XMLReference FOR AssociationEnd WS "WS" INDENT "1"
means: Add 1 to indentation level and use white space string "WS"
for the following expands. You can use the build target
sample.textui.indenting for an example \(and you can compare the
output with the build target sample.textui\). Perhaps you want to
check the sample to see how it works.... [read more](/p/architecturware/news/2003/12/yet-another-beta/)

Ilja has provided a beta release containing the current CVS source and a precompiled version for those of you without a CVS client.

Though progress has been slow we are determined to provide a stable release for production use 'soon'. It is not planned to add any new incompatabilities until the release.

Note: you can download the current version of the german reference documentation via http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/architecturware/doc/open%20Generator%20FrameWork%20Reference_de.sxw

The first installment of the Open Generator FrameWork code has been commited to the project CVS server and will hopefully soon be available by anonymous CVS (module name 'opengenfw').

The Open Generator FrameWork is a versatile MDA/D tool kit written in Java. It comes with an XMI based import interface supporting several popular design tools, powerful meta model framework, and a simple and elegant template language. Due to its modular design, each component can easily be extended or replaced.... read more