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