New and Noteworthy for openArchitectureWare 4.3.1

Integration with the Graphviz visualization toolkit
Refactoring support for Xpand and Xtend
XSD Adapter
Improved editor outlines
Release statistics
Migration

openArchitectureWare 4.3.1 is mainly a bugfix release. We have fixed over 90 bugs with a lot of help by active community members.

In addition to the bug fixes, the following major improvements should be especially mentioned:

Integration with the Graphviz visualization toolkit

This new component provides a DSL for quickly creating Graphviz diagrams:

Figure 77. Graphviz integration

Graphviz integration

The component also allows to transform any models handled by openArchitectureWare into diagrams.

Refactoring support for Xpand and Xtend

The editors for Xtend and Xpand editors now have refactoring support. For example, extensions and template definitions can be moved, renamed, and extracted

XSD Adapter

This is a component which allows oAW to transparently use XML Schemas (XSD) as meta models and read/write XML files as models.

Figure 78, “Example XML to Text Transformation” shows how a meta model can be specified using XML Schema ( metamodel.xsd ) and how an XML file ( model.xml ), which is an instance of this XML Schema (XSD), is used as model. In this example, text is generated from the model using an Xpand model to text transformation. The Xpand editor is aware of the XSD and therefore provides static type checking and code completion based on the XSD. The workflow ties all together: The XMLReader (see the section called “ XMLReader ) reads the XML file and accesses the XSD using an XSDMetaModel (see the section called “ XSDMetaModel ) , which transparently transforms the XSD to an Ecore model in the background (see the section called “Behind the scenes: Transforming XSD to Ecore” ). After reading the model, text is generated using a usual Xpand template.

Figure 78. Example XML to Text Transformation

Example XML to Text Transformation

Despite of reading XML files as models, models can also be written as XML files. Figure 79, “Example XML to XML Transformation” shows how the XMLReader (see the section called “ XMLReader ) reads an XML file based on a custom XSD, an Xtend model to model transformation is used to transform this an SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) based model, which is then serialized to XML using the XMLWriter (see the section called “ XMLWriter ) . Linke in the Xpand scenario above, the Xtend editor is aware of both the custom and the SVG-XSD and therefore provides static type checking and code completion. Any model that can be processed using oAW can be transformed to an XSD based one. Until now, creating XML files had to be done via a model to text transformation via Xpand. This approach guarantees that the created XML is valid to it's schema and beautified (can be deactivated). Furthermore there is the convenience of an output format aware editor.

Figure 79. Example XML to XML Transformation

Example XML to XML Transformation

To get started, check out the examples that come with oAW. They are accessible under File , New... , Examples .

Figure 80. XSD Examples

XSD Examples

Improved editor outlines

The outline views of the various editors that come with openArchitectureWare have been improved and work much more reliably now.

Release statistics

The list of bugs fixed during the last release can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/6kc9uu

The list of known issues can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/5rm28b

Migration

A migration guide for migrating Xtext 4.2 projects to Xtext 4.3 projects can be found in the reference documentation at Migrating from Xtext 4.2 to Xtext 4.3 .