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[Repast-developer] Templates w/ oAW & MetaABM Re: [Repast-interest] Generating agent descriptions from shapefiles
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From: Miles P. <mil...@gm...> - 2008-06-12 00:30:55
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I thought I'd move this over to repast-developer as it prob. isn't as
much general interest...
One other cool capability of oAW I should mention is that you can use
aspects in templates! This means that instead of editing the whole
template construction for all of the Java code, one can provide an
extension that adds or modifies the code generation to get the
behavior you want without knowing how the whole system is organized.
For example, we have a core Java target, then the Simphony and Ascape
targets are derived from that. So the code for creating a gis model is
currently just this...
«AROUND metaabm::tmpl::Java::Builder FOR SGrid»
//Agents are never actually added automatically
repast.simphony.space.grid.GridAdder «id()»Adder = new
repast.simphony.space.grid.RandomGridAdder();
repast.simphony.space.grid.GridBuilderParameters params = new
repast.simphony.space.grid.GridBuilderParameters(«newBorder()»,
«id()»Adder, true, «dimFieldName()»);
«fieldName()» =
repast
.simphony
.context
.space
.grid.GridFactoryFinder.createGridFactory(null).createGrid("«label»",
context, params);
«ENDAROUND»
Now this might be wrong or there might be a better way of doing it
but the point is that it is quite transparent. I haven't played with
"Aspects of Aspects" (say you want to alter the implementation of just
the above but not copy the whole Repast template) enough to know how
workable that would be.. but eventually I would like to provide
Eclipse extension points so that one could create a "MetaABM" template
project that would greatly simplify the process of creating one off
excursions. But currently it is not really as daunting as it may look
as always the hardest part seems to be dealing w/ Eclipse PDE bs .
Anyway I'm happy to mentor people on getting up to speed on this, and
I would be thrilled to get feedback on implementations / best
practices, e.g. "I really think that you shouldn't be using the
RandomGridAdder there.."
-Miles
On Jun 11, 2008, at 1:22 PM, Miles Parker wrote:
>
> Guys, this is _exactly_ what the .score system was originaly
> designed to do, and what the metaABM system provides. There is a
> direct mapping from metaABM -> score, so you can do all of your work
> in metaabm and then use the older score representation as an
> intermediate step. metaABM also generates all the basic descriptors
> and so on for the model.rs directory. We use the
> openArchitectureWare system which is becoming part of the core
> Eclipse environment and is extremely powerful, flexible and robust,
> though arguably not quite as easy to tweak as velocity. It is a
> simple set of plugins with dependencies on just the oAW plugins.
>
> The idea behind score/metaabm is to have an intermediate
> representational layer between various artifacts, design tools,
> languages, etc.. and various targets such as Simphony, other ABM
> platforms, specialized systems, etc.. metaABM already generates
> complete Simphony models from the high-level representation, You
> also get HTML docs generated automatically (Tom H. did the first run
> at this). We also provide a "Method" construct that allows one to
> insert Java code into the skeleton from the model. With the 1.1
> release which I am about to announce to this list :), there is much
> better support for protected regions and generation of skeleton
> structures, so that you can use the metaABM behavior representations
> and/or your own implementations.With the Metascape IDE, you can even
> create JUnit test case stubs, Interfaces, etc...
>
>
> All of that is to suggest a course of action that I was really
> hoping to be able to do but had no hope of getting to in the short
> term -- that is a key part of what you suggest; getting shape files
> into the metaABM system automatically. If one could do that, you'd
> have the code generation part done 'for free'.
>
> I have already done such a thing to import arbitrary Java and class
> files, so the basic approach is sketched out. The Ecore framework
> which MetaABM is built upon provides that ability to very easily
> programmatically define models, which are then persisted, just as if
> a use had created them. For example to create an attribute, you just
> do:
>
> SAttribute attr = MetaABMFactory.eINSTANCE.createSAttribute();
> ...
> agent.getAttributes().add(attr);
>
> What is missing is the part that gets the metadata from the shape
> files. I also have to do some work on the GIS target for Simphony
> side. What I can offer is...
>
> If you can get together the basic code to parse the Shape file
> parsed, I can build the metaABM part, and integrate it into the IDE.
> If you can identify any missng pieces from the GIS part of the
> existing metaabm design I can add them into the metadata model.
> If you can get together a general pseudo-code representation of what
> the Context builder part should look like, I can update the template
> to match.
>
> This wouldn't take a whole lot of time and would add a _lot_ of
> capability. Whaddya think?
>
>
> SO the basic idea would be
>
> On Jun 11, 2008, at 9:18 AM, Dave Murray-Rust wrote:
>
>> Nick,
>>
>> Great, I've used velocity previously, so that sounds good.
>>
>> I'm thinking of explicitly generating source files from shapefiles
>> rather than on the fly geneneration for exactly the reasons you
>> give -
>> it's much easier for code completion etc.
>>
>> I was thinking that it might make sense to create abstract classes
>> which were then subclassed to add functionality, so that if
>> shapefiles
>> change and regeneration is necessary, it's relatively easy to keep
>> the
>> handwritten code separate, although this does reduce the
>> possibilities
>> for inheriting other functionality. I'll have a play around and see
>> what seems sensible.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> dave
>>
>>
>> On 11 Jun 2008, at 16:27, Nick Collier wrote:
>>
>>> Dave,
>>>
>>> I think this is very good idea. We haven't planned on implementing
>>> such a thing. How are you thinking of this? A utility that generates
>>> the java source from a shapefile, or something more complicated? If
>>> you are thinking about generating java source then you might want to
>>> look at the velocity template engine. We use this in simphony
>>> already. With it you can define templates, like:
>>>
>>> #foreach($prop in $properties)
>>> public $prop.type get{$prop.name}() {
>>> ...
>>> }
>>>
>>> ...
>>> #end
>>>
>>> then you pass the velocity the template and in this case your
>>> properties and it will generate the file for you.
>>>
>>> See http://velocity.apache.org/engine/devel/user-guide.html for
>>> more.
>>>
>>> If you want to do more complicated on the fly class / object
>>> creation, we use javaassist for that:
>>>
>>> http://www.csg.is.titech.ac.jp/~chiba/javassist/
>>>
>>> The on the fly generation becomes more complicated in that the class
>>> won't exist at compile time, so if you refer to these agents in your
>>> code and expect it to compile the agent's type will have to be some
>>> interface or something that is known at compile time.
>>>
>>> As for packaging / distribution, if its the former source code
>>> generator then I think a stand alone utility that we would be happy
>>> to include with repast and link to on the website would be
>>> excellent.
>>>
>>> Nick
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jun 11, 2008, at 11:03 AM, Dave Murray-Rust wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> I've just been creating some agents from shapefiles, and while in
>>>> general it's great that this is possible, it gets a little fiddly
>>>> creating all the correct parameters for the agents matching the
>>>> parameters in the shapefile (I spent a few hours debugging the fact
>>>> that an ID was a long in one file and an int in another etc). It
>>>> seems
>>>> like it should be relatively easy to create a code generation
>>>> utility
>>>> which takes a shapefile and spits out agent classes.
>>>>
>>>> Before I get into this, though, I'd like to make sure that any
>>>> work I
>>>> do is as useful as possible, so I'm wondering:
>>>>
>>>> - Would this be useful to other people?
>>>> - Is it something that the core team are planning?
>>>> - How would you like to see it implemented? I guess the most
>>>> natural
>>>> solution would be addition to the repast plugin, but there is also
>>>> the
>>>> possibility of a standalone plugin, batch scripts etc.
>>>> - How much use for relational concepts would people have, such as
>>>> being able to say "The ownerID in this shapefile relates to the
>>>> ID in
>>>> this other shapefile" and have links automatically created when
>>>> shapefiles are loaded?
>>>> - Is there a particular code generation strategy or tool which
>>>> would
>>>> fit well with RepastS?
>>>> - If the best answer is to extend the RepastS plugin, is this
>>>> possible, and are there any docs which would help me get started?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for any suggestions!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
>>>> Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
>> Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
>>
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace.
>> It's the best place to buy or sell services for
>> just about anything Open Source.
>> http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php
>> _______________________________________________
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>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/repast-interest
>
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