EMF Forms

[dsh <da...@gmail.com>]

Hi,

sorry if this looks like SPAM - it isn't intended that way. I just stumbled
upon EMF Forms [1] and thought this would complement Apache Isis quite
nicely.

Have there already been researches how Apache Isis can leverage or
integrate with EMF Forms?

[1]
http://www.eclipse.org/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/june/article4.php

Cheers
Daniel

Re: EMF Forms

[dsh <da...@gmail.com>]

Hi Dan,

sorry for not replying earlier. I think having a DSL that would be
accompanied by a graphical representation including tool support to edit
that representation would be quiet interesting. Besides Eclipse I as well
worked with Sparx System Enterprise Architect and TogetherJ prio to its
Boralnd acquisition - so we do have something in common there :)

I once as well was fascinated by OCL, tho to me it looked like if you start
to enrich a model that way you somethimes maybe get lost or overwhelmed by
the richness and expressiveness of such models. So probably gold plating in
such circumstances should be omited. I as well ended up with models that
consumed a lot of memory and thus caused the JVM to crash :) These are
tools I evaluated at the time I worked on AndroMDA [1].

And yes tooling and metamodels is certainly something I am interested in!
That is in general and in the context of Apache Isis :)

[1] http://www.andromda.org/case-tools.html

Cheers
Daniel

On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 8:14 AM, Dan Haywood <da...@haywood-associates.co.uk>
wrote:

> On 29 July 2014 20:01, dsh <da...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Concerning you remark that mentions TogetherJ - Do think of something
> > UML-like or something less formal?
>
>
> I guess I'm thinking UML-like, but only really for class diagrams at least.
>  Or rather, as a projection of Isis' own metamodel, to show the contributed
> actions/collections/properties... that'd be really cool.  Non-visible
> (@Programmatic) methods could then be shown/hidden as required.
>
> In terms of more lightweight options, we've also been kicking around ideas
> of supporting a DSL for Isis... it even has a name, "Kemble" [2] and a spec
> [3].  One of our committers, Maurizio, has even done some experimentatoin
> on this using Eclipse XText, though we don't have agreement in the
> community whether the implementation language (of the methods) should be
> pure Java or should be XTend.
>
> I also did a bunch of plugins for Eclipse many years ago [4].  Not been
> looked at for a long time, but had a few nice features.  The README lists
> what was working, once.
>
>
>
> > PS: I once contributed to AndroMDA, an approach that I nowadays consider
> > rather heavyweight considering that you had to craft huge UML models and
> > had to annotate them with OCL constraints.
> >
> >
> Ah, OCL, don't hear much about that these days.  But I used to rather like
> OCL, perhaps because once upon a time I was a mathematician.
>
> it'd be rather nice, wouldn't it, to allow OCL constraints to be embedded
> within Isis and have the framework.  I know that there's an OCL evaluation
> engine out there, perhaps it could be plugged in somehow.  But not really a
> top priority .... OCL practitioners are quite rare, I think.
>
>
> ~~~
> Interested to hear your thoughts on the above... given you've contributed
> to AndroMDA in the past, perhaps tooling and metamodels is something of an
> interest to you?
>
>
>
>
> > Cheers
> > Daniel
> >
> >
>
> [2] Kemble is a village near the source of the River Thames; Isis is the
> name by which the River Thames is called when it flows through Oxford, near
> where I live.  So Kemble is the "source" of Isis.
> [3] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ISIS-369
> [4] https://github.com/danhaywood/apache-isis-ide
>
>
> >
>

Re: EMF Forms

[Dan Haywood <da...@haywood-associates.co.uk>]

On 29 July 2014 20:01, dsh <da...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Concerning you remark that mentions TogetherJ - Do think of something
> UML-like or something less formal?


I guess I'm thinking UML-like, but only really for class diagrams at least.
 Or rather, as a projection of Isis' own metamodel, to show the contributed
actions/collections/properties... that'd be really cool.  Non-visible
(@Programmatic) methods could then be shown/hidden as required.

In terms of more lightweight options, we've also been kicking around ideas
of supporting a DSL for Isis... it even has a name, "Kemble" [2] and a spec
[3].  One of our committers, Maurizio, has even done some experimentatoin
on this using Eclipse XText, though we don't have agreement in the
community whether the implementation language (of the methods) should be
pure Java or should be XTend.

I also did a bunch of plugins for Eclipse many years ago [4].  Not been
looked at for a long time, but had a few nice features.  The README lists
what was working, once.



> PS: I once contributed to AndroMDA, an approach that I nowadays consider
> rather heavyweight considering that you had to craft huge UML models and
> had to annotate them with OCL constraints.
>
>
Ah, OCL, don't hear much about that these days.  But I used to rather like
OCL, perhaps because once upon a time I was a mathematician.

it'd be rather nice, wouldn't it, to allow OCL constraints to be embedded
within Isis and have the framework.  I know that there's an OCL evaluation
engine out there, perhaps it could be plugged in somehow.  But not really a
top priority .... OCL practitioners are quite rare, I think.


~~~
Interested to hear your thoughts on the above... given you've contributed
to AndroMDA in the past, perhaps tooling and metamodels is something of an
interest to you?




> Cheers
> Daniel
>
>

[2] Kemble is a village near the source of the River Thames; Isis is the
name by which the River Thames is called when it flows through Oxford, near
where I live.  So Kemble is the "source" of Isis.
[3] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ISIS-369
[4] https://github.com/danhaywood/apache-isis-ide


>

Re: EMF Forms

[dsh <da...@gmail.com>]

Hi Dan,

thanks for pointing out that there is some kind of overlap between EMF as a
metamodel API and the API Apache Isis is already providing. At the moment I
saw EMF Forms I was instantly reminded of the initial Naked Object
implementation due to the fact that the model actually can be represented
by different UI framework implementations.

Concerning you remark that mentions TogetherJ - Do think of something
UML-like or something less formal? Over the past 2-3 years I had the
feeling UML is still popular in system engineering where amongst the
regular software developer population more lightweight approaches such as
sketching and wire-frame diagrams became more common.

PS: I once contributed to AndroMDA, an approach that I nowadays consider
rather heavyweight considering that you had to craft huge UML models and
had to annotate them with OCL constraints.

Cheers
Daniel


On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 9:54 AM, Dan Haywood <da...@haywood-associates.co.uk>
wrote:

> Hi Daniel,
>
> I've looked at EMF once or twice over the years, though not this current
> feature.
>
> The main issue I see in leveraging this technology is that it will depend
> upon Eclipse's EMF itself, which is a metamodel API.  Isis has had its own
> metamodel for many years now, and I don't think there would be anything
> really to gain in trying to rewrite to use EMF.
>
> Still, it's nice to see them doing something that looks similar to the
> Naked Objects pattern, even if it is perhaps somewhat limited in its
> current scope compared to Isis' capabilities.
>
> ~~~
> On a related note, I do see that Eclipse have continued to refine on their
> IDE tooling for diagrams.  One of my long-term ambitions is to provide an
> IDE akin to TogetherJ (before Borland bought it and messed it up).
>  Eclipse's tools might well be the route to supporting this.  But as I say
> that's a long term goal, not particularly near the top of my to-do list.
>
> Cheers
> Dan
>
>
>
>
> On 28 July 2014 20:56, Jeroen van der Wal <je...@stromboli.it> wrote:
>
> > Hi Daniel,
> >
> > The Isis community is always open towards new technologies but (as far
> as I
> > know) hasn't looked into EMF. Is it a candidate technology to build
> another
> > viewer or maybe as a bespoke frontend against the restful API?
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Jeroen
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 5:49 PM, dsh <da...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > sorry if this looks like SPAM - it isn't intended that way. I just
> > stumbled
> > > upon EMF Forms [1] and thought this would complement Apache Isis quite
> > > nicely.
> > >
> > > Have there already been researches how Apache Isis can leverage or
> > > integrate with EMF Forms?
> > >
> > > [1]
> > >
> >
> http://www.eclipse.org/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/june/article4.php
> > >
> > > Cheers
> > > Daniel
> > >
> >
>

Re: EMF Forms

[Dan Haywood <da...@haywood-associates.co.uk>]

Hi Daniel,

I've looked at EMF once or twice over the years, though not this current
feature.

The main issue I see in leveraging this technology is that it will depend
upon Eclipse's EMF itself, which is a metamodel API.  Isis has had its own
metamodel for many years now, and I don't think there would be anything
really to gain in trying to rewrite to use EMF.

Still, it's nice to see them doing something that looks similar to the
Naked Objects pattern, even if it is perhaps somewhat limited in its
current scope compared to Isis' capabilities.

~~~
On a related note, I do see that Eclipse have continued to refine on their
IDE tooling for diagrams.  One of my long-term ambitions is to provide an
IDE akin to TogetherJ (before Borland bought it and messed it up).
 Eclipse's tools might well be the route to supporting this.  But as I say
that's a long term goal, not particularly near the top of my to-do list.

Cheers
Dan




On 28 July 2014 20:56, Jeroen van der Wal <je...@stromboli.it> wrote:

> Hi Daniel,
>
> The Isis community is always open towards new technologies but (as far as I
> know) hasn't looked into EMF. Is it a candidate technology to build another
> viewer or maybe as a bespoke frontend against the restful API?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jeroen
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 5:49 PM, dsh <da...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > sorry if this looks like SPAM - it isn't intended that way. I just
> stumbled
> > upon EMF Forms [1] and thought this would complement Apache Isis quite
> > nicely.
> >
> > Have there already been researches how Apache Isis can leverage or
> > integrate with EMF Forms?
> >
> > [1]
> >
> http://www.eclipse.org/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/june/article4.php
> >
> > Cheers
> > Daniel
> >
>

Re: EMF Forms

[Jeroen van der Wal <je...@stromboli.it>]

Hi Daniel,

The Isis community is always open towards new technologies but (as far as I
know) hasn't looked into EMF. Is it a candidate technology to build another
viewer or maybe as a bespoke frontend against the restful API?

Cheers,

Jeroen


On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 5:49 PM, dsh <da...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> sorry if this looks like SPAM - it isn't intended that way. I just stumbled
> upon EMF Forms [1] and thought this would complement Apache Isis quite
> nicely.
>
> Have there already been researches how Apache Isis can leverage or
> integrate with EMF Forms?
>
> [1]
> http://www.eclipse.org/community/eclipse_newsletter/2014/june/article4.php
>
> Cheers
> Daniel
>