A Generic Projectional Editor for EMF Models

Johannes Schröpfer, Thomas Buchmann, Bernhard Westfechtel

2020

Abstract

The Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) constitutes a popular ecosystem for model-driven development. In the technological space of EMF, a wide variety of model-based tools have been developed, including tools for transforming and editing models. Model editors may display models in different representations such as diagrams, trees, or tables. Due to the increasing popularity of human-readable textual syntax, there is a growing demand for textual model editors. In EMF, this demand is currently satisfied by syntax-based editors which persist models as text files. In contrast, we propose a projectional editor that persists models natively as EMF models; the textual representation constitutes a projection of the underlying EMF model. Projectional editing does not only exclude syntactic errors; in addition, maintaining the underlying model persistently facilitates tool integration. The projectional editor is generic; it may be instantiated for different modeling languages by declarative definitions of their concrete syntax. So far, model editors for subsets of Java and ALF (Action Language for Foundational UML) have been built to demonstrate the feasibility of the generic approach.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Schröpfer J., Buchmann T. and Westfechtel B. (2020). A Generic Projectional Editor for EMF Models. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development - Volume 1: MODELSWARD, ISBN 978-989-758-400-8, pages 381-392. DOI: 10.5220/0008971003810392

in Bibtex Style

@conference{modelsward20,
author={Johannes Schröpfer and Thomas Buchmann and Bernhard Westfechtel},
title={A Generic Projectional Editor for EMF Models},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development - Volume 1: MODELSWARD,},
year={2020},
pages={381-392},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0008971003810392},
isbn={978-989-758-400-8},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development - Volume 1: MODELSWARD,
TI - A Generic Projectional Editor for EMF Models
SN - 978-989-758-400-8
AU - Schröpfer J.
AU - Buchmann T.
AU - Westfechtel B.
PY - 2020
SP - 381
EP - 392
DO - 10.5220/0008971003810392