This document describes Model2Roo, a web application development tool based on the Eclipse Modeling Framework and Spring Roo. It allows generating web applications by transforming UML class diagrams into Spring Roo commands. The document discusses the background of the project, its objectives, related work, issues identified by users, technical issues addressed, and recent improvements made, including implementing transformations with Acceleo templates and improving support for properties and installation.

1. Model2Roo: Web Application
Development based on the Eclipse
Modeling Framework and Spring Roo
Juan Castrejón, Genoveva Vargas-Solar, Rafael Lozano
University of Grenoble, CNRS, Tecnológico de Monterrey
ACME 2012

2. 2
Background
• First version of the project presented in early 2011
Google Code Project Conference Paper
http://code.google.com/p/model2roo http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/CONIELECOMP.2011.5749344

3. 3
Objective
• Generate web applications, by transforming Class
diagrams into Spring Roo commands
Ecore, UML2 ATL Queries Spring Roo commands
Spring Roo details:
Ecore Annotations, UML Profiles

4. 4
Related work
• Web application development based on MDE techniques
is a widely studied topic
• Web Modeling Language (WebML), WebRatio
• UWE approach
• Acceleo generators
• However, Model2Roo provides an association to modern
development tools, through the Spring Roo project
• Spring Roo is responsible for the actual code generation
• Access to a wide variety of SpringSource projects

5. 5
User-identified issues
1. Insufficient support for graphical environments
• Limited support for complex UML editors, such as Papyrus
• Limited support for numeric data types
2. Basic edition of Spring Roo properties
• Spring Roo properties could only be set as free text
• Users were required to know the domains for each property
3. Troublesome installation procedure
• Tool deployed as a single plugin file
• Manual installation of the required dependencies (ATL, Papyrus)

6. 6
Technical issues
1. Maintenance of ATL queries
• Not a standard Model-To-Text specification
2. Output Spring Roo commands into a file
• ATL was designed primarily for M2M not for M2T
• In order to generate files, we had to modify ATL loggers
• Not an elegant solution, prone to subtle errors
3. Invocation of ATL queries from Eclipse plugin
• Limited documentation

7. 7
Recent improvements
1. Transformations implemented as Acceleo templates
• Standard notation (MOFM2T)
• Powerful syntax editors
• Automatic generation of UI Launcher projects (Eclipse plugin)
2. Improved edition of Spring Roo properties
• Full support for Papyrus profiles (UML)
• Properties domains are specified in the UML profiles
• Fixed support for Ecore Annotations
3. Improved installation procedure
• Eclipse update site containing all required dependencies

8. 8
UML
Profile

9. 9
What do we use it for?
1. Generate test scenarios
Architecture recovery
and verification
Web2MexADL
http://code.google.com/p/web2mexadl
MexADL
http://code.google.com/p/mexadl
MVC Analyzer
http://code.google.com/p/mvc-analyzer
2. Research prototypes Data Storage
Instance Model Bus Model-Driven Cloud Data Storage
http://code.google.com/p/instance-model-bus http://code.google.com/p/modesto

10. 10
Model-Driven Cloud Data Storage
1
High-level
abstractions
Java
web
App
Spring Data/CDMI/etc.
UML class diagram Spring Roo
2
Low-level
abstractions
Graph database
Relational database

11. 11
Demonstration / Questions
Contact: Juan.Castrejon@imag.fr