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"I've had an opportunity recently to work on a product that needed an RIA web interface, and I chose my recent favorite tool for this, Vaadin. The services for this project needed to be highly scalable, and lent themselves well to functional techniques, so I selected Scala as my language of choice. I build my projects with Maven, for reasons I won't go into right now, and I do much of my JVM-language work in Intellij's excellent IDEA IDE. Given these tools, I found a way to facilitate very rapid development of web UI's, and I thought I'd pass it along. Another technique I use, which I'll expound on later, is creating "dummy" implementations of all of my backing services for my application. The "real" implementations are written as OSGi services, in separate modules from my UI. The UI is packaged as a war, but is also OSGi aware, with a bundle activator. This activator only gets called if the war is deployed into an OSGi container, and not otherwise. This allows the app to select which implementation of the services it uses - the "dummy" ones when it's deployed outside of OSGi, and the "real" ones when they're available. This means I can use the handy Maven jetty plugin to quickly spin up my application and test it on my local workstation, without needing all of the dependencies (like a data store and such) of my real services. That's good, in that I can get my "cycle time" down to a few seconds, where "cycle time" is the time between making a change and actually being able to test it in my browser. We can do better, though. I'm using Scala as my language of choice for building the UI as well, as it works just fine with Vaadin (and with everything else in the JVM ecosystem, for that matter, which is why I didn't choose a non-JVM language - but that's yet another rant). I compile my Scala with the Maven scala plugin - here's where the next handy bit comes into play. Turns out the Scala plugin has a goal cal

Data, Context and Interaction (DCI) is a paradigm used in computer software to program systems of communicating objects. Its goals are: To improve the readability of object-oriented code by giving system behavior first-class status; To cleanly separate code for rapidly changing system behavior (what the system does) from code for slowly changing domain knowledge (what the system is), instead of combining both in one class interface; To help software developers reason about system-level state and behavior instead of only object state and behavior; To support an object style of thinking that is close to peoples' mental models, rather than the class style of thinking that overshadowed object thinking early in the history of object-oriented programming languages. The paradigm separates the domain model (Data) from Use cases (Context) and Roles that objects play (Interaction). DCI is complementary to Model-view-controller (MVC). MVC as a pattern language is still used to separate the data and its processing from presentation. DCI was invented by Trygve Reenskaug, also the inventor of MVC. The current formulation of DCI is mostly the work of Reenskaug and James O. Coplien.

There was a recent outburst in blogs on the topic of Groovy and how it compares to Java. Although I respect the youthfull entusiasim of Groovy and Co. working on this little exercise I'm just perplexed by the "WHY?" in this whole discussion. Let me just say again: W H Y ?!?! 1. Practically no one cares about Groovy (let alone Groovy++ strap-on) beyond Grails community. So this language just as "widely accepted" as Ruby (at least for enterprise software development) 2. If you know Java it's equally "challenging" to pick up either Groovy or Scala. Don't let anyone insult your intelligence by claiming that Scala syntax is somehow more complex than Groovy. In both languages you will need to adapt to functional thinking - and that's where you will have to spend a couple of weekends… 3. If you know Groovy - you already know 90% of Scala (different syntax and few extra features can be picked up in the evening) 4. Scala is designed by people who have proper academic background, experience and talent in the area of language design - Groovy has never been that way (and anyone who dares to look inside of Groovy runtime or history of changes in it will attest to that). NOTE: it did come out rather strong - but that's how I feel about it and after some thinking I'll leave as is. Nothing personal to anyone reading it… 5. Scala as a post-functional language is years ahead of Groovy (static typing with best-in-business type inference, highly tuned mix of imperative and functional styles, powerful and done-right generics, etc.) 6. Groovy will ALWAYS be slower than Scala or Java (latest benchmarks put even Groovy++ about 50 times slower than Java) just by its nature unless someone changes the language and rebuilds the runtime from the ground up. 7. Once we get decent integration with Eclipse, NetBeans and IDEA for Scala, the Groovy will lose its only serious advantage

ModeShape (formerly "JBoss DNA") is a JCR 2.0 (JSR-283) implementation that provides access to content stored in many different kinds of systems. A ModeShape repository isn't yet another silo of isolated information, but rather it's a JCR view of the information you already have in your environment: files systems, databases, other repositories, services, applications, etc. To your applications, ModeShape looks and behaves like a regular JCR repository. Using the standard JCR API, applications can search, navigate, version, and listen for changes in the content. But under the covers, ModeShape gets its content by federating multiple back-end systems (like databases, services, other repositories, etc.), allowing those systems to continue "owning" the information while ensuring the unified repository stays up-to-date and in sync. ModeShape repositories can be used in a variety of applications. One of the most obvious ones is in provisioning and management, where it's critical to understand and keep track of the metadata for models, database, services, components, applications, clusters, machines, and other systems used in an enterprise. Governance takes that a step farther, by also tracking the policies and expectations against which performance can be verified. In these cases, a repository is an excellent mechanism for managing this complex and highly-varied information. But a ModeShape repository doesn't have to be large and complex: it could just manage configuration information for an application, or it could just provide a JCR interface on top of a couple of non-JCR systems.

"Developers usually have their programs write log and debug information to the standard output during coding and testing. This results in a lot of text being printed to Eclipse's console view, often more than can be easily surveyed. Since at any given time, only a small part of this information is of primary interest to the developer, a tool which highlights specific lines or words can significantly increase the readability of this output. Grep Console allows you to define a series of regular expressions which will be tested against the console output. Each expression matching a line will affect the style of either the entire line or parts of it. For example, error messages could be set to show up with a red background, or integer values showing the state of a certain variable could be rendered in bold font. "

"Community Dashboard Framework (CDF) is a project that allows you to create friendly, powerful, fully featured dashboards on top of the Pentaho BI server. Former Pentaho dashboards had several drawbacks from a developer's point of view. The developing process was awkward, it required know-how of web technologies and programming languages, and basically it was time-consuming. CDF emerged as a need for a framework that overcame all those difficulties. The final result is a powerful framework featuring the following: . It is based on Open Source technologies. . It separates logic (JavaScript) of the presentation (HTML, CSS) . It features a life cycle with components interacting with each other . It uses AJAX . It is extensible, which gives the users a high level of customization: . Advanced users can extend the library of components. . They also can insert their own snippets of JavaScript and jQuery code. CDF can be used: . As part of a Pentaho solution. This is the most common scenario. . In a standalone mode as an alternative to the Pentaho User Console . Integrated with Portlets, PHP applications, intranet portals and even desktop applications. "

 As TOPCASED project leader I want to assess the usage of ours Tools in Academic and industrial projects. This assessment will help us and you to assure credibility of the Topcased projects and tools and then to insure their durability.  To do this "state of the art" could you give me back your usage of  TOPCASED Tools : which tool, for which kind of projects (evaluation, industrial, research) and all information you are able to give to us ? Specially for academics could you give me information about the usage of our tools in engineers trainees or thesis : which cursus at which level, number of student already trained, subject of thesis.  If you need some confidentiality on your information, tell me that and I will remains it for my own.   Thanks to send your Topcased usage returns to patrick.farail at airbus dot com  Thanks a lot to help us on this work I will give you back this results by mail.   Patrick Farail from Airbus TOPCASED Project leader 

SymmetricDS is web-enabled, database independent, data synchronization/replication software. It uses web and database technologies to replicate tables between relational databases in near real time. The software was designed to scale for a large number of databases, work across low-bandwidth connections, and withstand periods of network outage. By using database triggers, SymmetricDS guarantees that data changes are captured and atomicity is preserved. Support for database vendors is provided through a Database Dialect layer, with implementations for MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, DB2, Firebird, HSQLDB, H2, and Apache Derby included. Synchronization can be configured to push data (trickle-back) or pull data (trickle-poll) at an interval. SymmetricDS allows for synchronization between two or more tiers of nodes, such as the following: A farm of web server nodes fronting an enterprise-class general office database A handful of regional servers for synchronizing from the general office to remote geographical areas 1000(s) of store server nodes using a departmental class database to sync with a regional node 10(s) of Point of Sale (POS) register nodes using an embedded database to sync with a store server Deployment options include the following: Web application archive (WAR) deployed to an application server such as Tomcat, Jetty, or JBoss Standalone service Embedded in an application SymmetricDS is written in Java and licensed as open source software under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

"An "executable" UML model is one with a behavioral specification detailed enough that it can effectively be "run" as a program. This can be extremely valuable in order to test and validate the model, independently of the one or more implementation platforms to which the system being modeled will ultimately be deployed. Or, in some cases, the model itself can actually be run as the production implementation, given an appropriate execution environment. There have been model execution tools and environments for years, even before UML. However, each tool defined its own semantics for model execution, often including a proprietary action language, and models developed in one tool could not be interchanged with or interoperate with models developed in another tool. A previous post described Stephen Mellor's quest of more than a decade to change this through OMG standards for precise UML model execution semantics and a UML action language. In 2008, this led to the adoption of the Foundational UML (fUML) specification, providing the first precise operational and base semantics for a subset of UML encompassing most object-oriented and activity modeling. The fUML specification still did not provide any new concrete surface syntax, however, tying the precise semantics solely to the existing abstract syntax model of UML. This meant that, in order to fully specify a detailed behavior in a UML model - say the effect behavior of a transition on a state machine or the method of an operation of a class - one still had to draw a very detailed, graphical activity diagram. "

" Over the past few years, and actually the past year, a lot of new initiatives have surfaced in the area of creating so called language workbenches - aiming at facilitating the definition and use of DSLs and code generation. We believe each of these has its own strengths and weaknesses, and none is 'the best' for every purpose. Still, a lot of people keep asking for the best workbench. Based on that, we are now planning to have a Language Workbench Competition, in which we will be able to compare the strengths and weaknesses of these workbenches based on solutions for a predefined set of cases. Keep an eye on this page for more details in the coming, as the cases are being defined and the possibilities of co-hosting this initative at Code Generation 2011 in Cambridge are being investigated."

The aim of this paper is a brief introduction to MDA technology and a summary / comparison to the approachments to MDA of AndroMDA and Acceleo, intending to be a practical and understandable summary Introduction Model-driven architecture (MDA) is a software design approach for the development of software systems. It provides a set of guidelines for the structuring of specifications, which are expressed as models. It was launched by the Object Management Group (OMG) in 2001 The Model-Driven Architecture approach defines system functionality using a platform-independent model (PIM) using an appropriate domain-specific language (DSL). One of the main aims of the MDA is to separate design from architecture. As the concepts and technologies used to realize designs and the concepts and technologies used to realize architectures have changed at their own pace, decoupling them allows system developers to choose from the best and most fitting in both domains. The design addresses the functional (use case) requirements while architecture provides the infrastructure through which non-functional requirements like scalability, reliability and performance are realized. MDA envisages that the platform independent model (PIM), which represents a conceptual design realizing the functional requirements, will survive changes in realization technologies and software architectures.

"I'll try to list all the MDE tools I know, I'll also try to reference them by their scope. Feel free to comment this list of MDE tools! M2M/M2T tools: actifsource (http://www.actifsource.com/) AndroMDA (http://www.andromda.org/) Eclipse ATL (http://www.eclipse.org/atl/) is a part of Eclipse Modeling project Eclipse QVTO (http://wiki.eclipse.org/M2M/QVTO) is a part of Eclipse Modeling project Itemis/Eclipse xpand/xtend (http://wiki.eclipse.org/Xpand) it was originaly a part of the no longer supported openArchitectureWare (http://oaw.itemis.com/ & http://www.openarchitectureware.org/) is now a part of Eclipse Modeling project Mia-Software Mia-Generation (http://www.mia-software.com/) is a part of Mia-Studio tool suite Mia-Software Mia-Transformation (http://www.mia-software.com/) is a part of Mia-Studio tool suite Obeo/Eclipse Acceleo (http://www.eclipse.org/acceleo/) is a M2T tool that has recently moved from the Obeo (http://www.obeo.fr/) company to Eclipse Modeling project"

"Libra is an open source project under the Eclipse Web Tools Platform Container Project. It provides standard tools for OSGi Enterprise application development and in particular tools that integrate the existing WTP and PDE tooling so that OSGi Enterprise applications can be developed with both tooling at the same time. Libra also will enable users to work with tools for better experience in the Server-Side Equinox scenario. The goals of the project are: Providing tools for creation of deployable artifacts for application servers implementing the OSGi Enterprise specification, e.g. wizard for creating new Web Application Bundle projects. Providing tools for converting existing Java EE deployable artifacts to OSGi Enterprise deployable artifacts, e.g. wizard for converting Dynamic Web projects to a Web Application Bundle projects. Contributing tools for editing and validation of the metadata of OSGi Enterprise artifacts, e.g. extension of the PDE Manifest Editor for editing manifest headers that are specific to Web Application Bundles. Developing OSGi server adapter, providing basic implementation of configuring an OSGi-based application server, starting it and deploying OSGi enterprise artifacts. This server adapter should be customizable and extensible by adopters. Delivering tools that improve the experience of developing Server-Side Equinox applications. Extending the tools in scope, so adopters can apply them depending on their own application model."

"Quercus is Caucho Technology's 100% Java implementation of PHP 5 released under the Open Source GPL license. Quercus comes with many PHP modules and extensions like PDF, PDO, MySQL, and JSON. Quercus allows for tight integration of Java services with PHP scripts, so using PHP with JMS or Grails is a quick and painless endeavor. With Quercus, PHP applications automatically take advantage of Java application server features just as connection pooling and clustered sessions. Quercus implements PHP 5 and a growing list of PHP extensions including APC, iconv, GD, gettext, JSON, MySQL, Oracle, PDF, and Postgres. Many popular PHP application will run as well as, if not better, than the standard PHP interpreter straight out of the box. The growing list of PHP software certified running on Quercus includes DokuWiki, Drupal, Gallery2, Joomla, Mambo, Mantis, MediaWiki, Phorum, phpBB, phpMyAdmin, PHP-Nuke, Wordpress and XOOPS. Quercus presents a new mixed Java/PHP approach to web applications and services where Java and PHP tightly integrate with each other. PHP applications can choose to use Java libraries and technologies like JMS, EJB, SOA frameworks, Hibernate, and Spring. This revolutionary capability is made possible because 1) PHP code is interpreted/compiled into Java and 2) Quercus and its libraries are written entirely in Java. This architecture allows PHP applications and Java libraries to talk directly with one another at the program level. To facilitate this new Java/PHP architecture, Quercus provides and API and interface to expose Java libraries to PHP. The Quercus .war file can be run on Java application servers such as Glassfish, i.e. it can be run outside of Resin. This .war file includes the Quercus interpreter and the PHP libraries."

"Let's imagine we want to create an application for orders. People can sign in to the system, place orders for various items, check out and have them sent to their address. Very simple, but we can show a lot of things here. As we expect to be writing more than one application of this type and as we also would like to be able to express the structure of the application on a business level (one of the major drivers for DSLs and MDSD for that matter), we come up with the idea of using a DSL to describe what the application does. Defining the DSL is what we did last week. This week, we need to map the concepts of the DSL to some code and some APIs we're going to program against. So, we're going to create a set of code templates for a code generator that can then read our DSL models and create persistence code for us."

" Given that web service invocations are always remote across the internet, developing rigorous and responsive web service client applications has always been a challenge for architects and developers working with SOA. JAX-WS 2.0 comes with one effective solution to this problem: asynchronous web service invocation, with which a web service client may interact with a web service in a non-blocking, asynchronous approach. In this article, we will provide an exposition of this technology with examples built upon the reference implementation. Our examples utilize JDK 5.0, JAX-WS 2.0 reference implementation (RI), and Tomcat 5.5. JAX-WS 2.0 requires JAXP 1.3. To replace the JAXP 1.2 released with JDK 5.0 with this newer version, one approach is to download the JAXP 1.3 RI, and copy the endorsed directory under /lib of its installation home to %JAVA_HOME%/jre/lib. We need to copy the jaxp-api.jar of JAXP 1.3 RI to %JAVA_HOME%/jre/lib/endorsed as well. To make Tomcat 5.5 work with JAX-WS 2.0, readers need to copy all the .jar files under the /lib directory of the JAX-WS 2.0 RI installation to the %CATALINA_HOME%/shared/lib directory. As of this writing (in addition to Tomcat 5.5), Sun Java System Application Server 9.0, GlassFish, and Celtix also support JAX-WS 2.0. xFire is in the process of completing its implementation of this specification. Since asynchronous web service invocation in JAX-WS 2.0 is built upon the concurrent programming support in JDK 5.0 introduced with the java.util.concurrent package, we will start from there."

COPE, a tool based on EMF that eases the migration of models in response to an evolving metamodel. COPE explicitly records the history of the metamodel as a sequence of changes and allows to attach information of how to migrate models (which is referred to as coupled evolution). The attached information can be used to automatically migrate models to the new version of the metamodel. COPE even goes one step further and allows to reuse combinations of metamodel adaptation and model migration steps across metamodels.

"Businesses involve a lot of functions and in any company, large or small, dedicated departments handle the functions assigned to them. This compartmentalization ensures that experts in the respective domain handle things efficiently. But as the company grows there arises a situation when too much time and resources are wasted when each of the departments carry out functions that are redundant. For example, it is too expensive when both the purchase team and the warehouse management team maintain the same list of products but each in their own format. That may be a tiny part of how Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) can help you avoid redundancies to run an efficient business. Based on the size of the company and requirements, ERP packages are available from a few thousand to millions of dollars. Today we'll check out how to set up Openbravo, a modern and professionally backed open source ERP that is cost effective to acquire, operate and upgrade."

Mod4j (Modeling for Java) is an open source DSL-based environment for developing administrative enterprise applications. It uses a collection of DSL's to model different parts of the architecture, combined with manually written code. Currently Mod4j consists of four DSLs: the Business Domain DSL, Service DSL, Data Contract DSL and Presentation DSL. The modeling environment is seamlessly integrated into the Eclipse IDE which gives the developers one environment where they can easily switch back- and forth between models and code. The different DSL?s used in Mod4j can be used independently, but if they are used in collaboration they will be fully validated with each other. Apart from integration in the Eclipse IDE, Mod4j also supports the use of Maven. That is, using the DSL models as the source, the complete code generation process can be run automatically on a build server without the need for Eclipse. The Mod4j DSLs and the corresponding code generators are based on a reference architecture. This allows developers to model various aspects of the application and generate code that strictly follows this reference architecture. The reference architecture is described in a separate document. For a good understanding of the generated code it is useful to read this document.