[Uml-devel] Re: Universal Model DataTypes in umbrello

[Andrew Sutton]

> 	Yeah, thats my feeling too, and in fact, now that I think about it,
> 	the way its currently implemented is just like the "umbrello:<datatype>"
> 	solution I proposed, so no work need really be done :)

less code is always better code :) which doesn't bode well for the omf which 
is currently topping the charts around 135 kloc ;)

> 	One of my goals for the next period of development in umbrello
> 	is to see some type of round-tripping implemented. Im also concerned
> 	how the current code import scheme might fit in with round-tripping. 
> 	So, I'd be interested in any papers/notes/articles that you (or anyone
> 	else on this list) may have written or can point me to concerning this.

here's my bibliography as of this morning when i started compiling it. i 
haven't mined out the references yet, so i'm sure there's tons of stuff i'm 
missing.

http://www1.elsevier.com/gej-ng/31/29/23/133/47/27/82.5.005.pdf
http://www.ida.liu.se/~henla/papers/roundtrip-engineering.pdf
http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~scg/Archive/Papers/Deme99dUML99.pdf

oddly, some of the definitions are starting to fit with some of the ideas in 
MDA - at least if you start substituting the word "domain" for the word 
"model". so any papers on MDA would also be a good starting point. it'll 
probably be nice to lookup stuff on reverse engineering with UML too since 
reverse engineering is one of the model transformation functions (source to 
UML).

right now, i'm just compiling some notes on how to build a rountrip 
implementation for kdevelop using the omf. naturally, the success of this 
project is going to depend heavily on the umbrello developers voting for (and 
actually starting on) a complete rewrite for the next major version of 
umbrello in the next month or two - and of course we'd have to use the omf as 
the underlying object model :)

actually, if you're interested in just working on roundtripping without the 
overhead of umbrello, the omf is in a pretty good state to do so. granted, 
there's no ui, but some of the original ideas can be built as command line 
tools - specifically for some of the initial work on reverse engineering. 
besides, i need a user other than myself :)

if you do decide that's something you'd be interested, we should probably talk 
about the overall design of a roundtrip component, what transformations are 
required, what parameters might be needed, etc, etc.

andy