Eclipse Modeling Project: A Domain-Specific Language (DSL) Toolkit Book

Achieve Breakthrough Productivity and Quality with MDD and Eclipse-Based DSLs

Domain-specific languages (DSLs) and model-driven development (MDD) offer software engineers powerful new ways to improve productivity, enhance quality, and insulate systems from rapid technological change. Now, there’s a pragmatic, start-to-finish guide to creating DSLs and using MDD techniques with the powerful open source Eclipse platform. In Eclipse Modeling Project, Richard C. Gronback illuminates both the principles and techniques software professionals need to master, offering insights that will be invaluable to developers working with any tool or platform.

As coleader of the Eclipse Modeling Project, Gronback is singularly well-positioned to demonstrate DSLs and MDD at work in Eclipse. Gronback systematically introduces each of the Eclipse technologies that can be used in DSL and MDD development. Throughout, he introduces key concepts and technologies in the context of a complete worked example and presents new best practices and never-before published techniques. He also covers Eclipse projects discussed in no other book, including Query/View/Transformation (QVT) and the Graphical Modeling Framework (GMF)–a project the author personally leads.

Eclipse Modeling Project gives software practitioners all the knowledge they need to explore the remarkable potential of DSLs and MDD–and includes coverage of

• Why a model-based approach enables the rapid customization of high-quality solutions within the product line paradigm
• How the Eclipse Modeling Project’s capabilities can be used to efficiently create new DSLs
• Powerful techniques for developing DSL abstract syntax, graphical notation, and textual syntax
• How to build Model-to-Model (M2M) and Model-to-Text (M2T) transformations–including a powerful new M2M implementation of the Object Management Group’s QVT Operational Mapping Language (OML)
• Efficiently packaging and deploying DSLs with Eclipse
• Complete reference sections for the Graphical Editing Framework (GEF), GMF runtime and tooling, QVT OML, Xpand, and more

Foreword xix

Preface xxi

Acknowledgments xxiii

About the Author xxv

Part I: Introduction 1

Chapter 1: Introduction 3

Chapter 2: Modeling Project as a DSL Toolkit 17

Part II: Developing Domain-Specific Languages 27

Chapter 3: Developing a DSL Abstract Syntax 29

Chapter 4: Developing a DSL Graphical Notation 55

Chapter 5: Developing a DSL Textual Syntax 227

Chapter 6: Developing Model-to-Model Transformations 231

Chapter 7: Developing Model-to-Text Transformations 277

Chapter 8: DSL Packaging and Deployment 303

Part III: Reference 315

Chapter 9: Graphical Editing Framework 317

Chapter 10: Graphical Modeling Framework Runtime 353

Chapter 11: Graphical Modeling Framework Tooling 503

Chapter 12: Graphical Modeling Framework FAQs 545

Chapter 13: Query/View/Transformation Operational Mapping Language 549

Chapter 14: Xpand Template Language 605

Part IV: Appendixes 651

Appendix A: Graphical Modeling Framework Key Bindings 653

Appendix B: Model-Driven Architecture at Eclipse 661

References 671