The classical approach to collaborate on the same model is usually to split the model into several files managed with a source control system such as SVN.There are two major problems to this approach:lock granularity: it is not reasonable to create a file by model element. So, each time you need to modify an object, you lock all the other model elements contained in the same file.real-time updates: when a modification occurs, the other users have to manually reload the files which contain the changesThese problems have been well described by Alex Lagarde in this post: Live Collaboration with Obeo Designer 6The solution provided with Obeo Designer consists in a CDO-based repository which contains shared models and their representations (diagrams, tables and trees).Each time a user changes the property of a model element, only this element is locked. The author of the modification sees a green padlock on the element, while other users instantly see a red padlock on each representation wh...

On behalf of the team, I am very proud to announce that the 2.0 release of EMF Compare is now available and can be downloaded from its update site. This release is compatible with Eclipse 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8 and 4.2.This new version is an overhaul of the project and as such contains too many enhancements to really list. You can refer to the project plan for an overview of the major themes adressed by this new release, or to my previous post for more information on why we decided to rewrite EMF Compare.API compatibility between the 1.3 and 2.0 releases is not assured. The new APIs provided with 2.0 were developed in order to be simpler and more intuitive. A migration guide is not yet available, but we will provide all possible help in order to bridge the gap between the two streams' APIs and help users migrate to the new and improved Compare.Do not hesitate to drop by on the forum for any question regarding this release!Lien d'origineAuteur d'origine: Laurent...

Modeling Satellites Software Architecture, a European Space Agency research initiativeWould you develop a satellite application the same way you develop a «classic» application ?Of course not! When developing an application embedded in a satellite, a software engineer has to deal with many additional constraints:1. The software platform is constrained by so many factors (energy consumption, temperature, scarce computational power and memory size, etc) that general purpose methodologies are not always applicable.2. Computation time and duration must be highly predictable in order to satisfy the complex orchestration of actions performed by the satellite.3. As failures may lead to loss of mission, catastrophic damages or loss of lives, the quality of the software drives the development processIn order to support these constraints, the European Space Agency (ESA) has initiated an investigation for the realization of  a software reference architecture (SRA) for on-board...

From now, on this blog, my posts mainly described case-studies where model-driven engineering (MDE) has been used to produce code or modernize existing software systems.Another domain where MDE is widely used is System Engineering. In this domain, Thales has acquired a strong experience with the Arcadia approach.Arcadia is a model-based architecture engineering approach which has been tooled up in Eclipse with Melody Advance, a generic workbench developped  by Thales Engineering & Process Management with the assistance of Obeo.Based on EMF and GMF, Melody Advance allows other Thales entities to create their own modeling tools. These modeling tools are declared with a dedicated DSL which is interpreted to dynamically provide the corresponding GMF modeling editors coming with ergonomic facilities and supporting large models.Arcadia has been presented at MD Day 2011 by Jean-Luc Voirin, the System and Software Engineering Director of Research & Technology at Thales Aerospace ...

Eclipse Juno has been released with plenty of new exciting features.Of course, the most famous new feature is about the platform which is now based on the Eclipse 4.X main stream.The New and  Noteworthy for Platform, JDT, PDE and Equinox explains all these new facilities.For the Modeling project, the Annual Report resumes the main activities for this release:The increasing popularity of modeling and model-driven development continues to be an important driver for the growth of Eclipse. The modeling ecosystem is active and diverse with commiters from more than 30 different companies. New projects are created with regularity and are inherently integrated by virtue of their reuse of EMF's core APIs.In 2012, modeling extends its community by addressing the need of a broad range of domains.DSLs for programming languages using Xtext's extensible expression language are exploited by Xcore, a textual syntax for EMF's Ecore and by Xtend, an concise JVM-based language. Both support...