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1.2.2 1999-2003: Interchange formats, visualizations

With the introduction of the XMI standard, a first MOF meta-meta-model was implemented and CDIF meta-models were transformed into MOF meta-models for the XMI model generation. However, MOF was not used as the underlying Moose meta-meta-model.

In parallel, the visualization development led to the extension of the set of metrics computed. At the time, CodeCrawler was the flagship application of Moose. CodeCrawler was created by Michele Lanza as part of his PhD work and it became well known through the invention of the concept of Polymetric Views. For a significant period CodeCrawler influenced the architecture of Moose (1999). For example, the metrics had to be computed for all entities before the views could be generated.

The interest in researching the evolution of systems led to the implementation of the meta-model repository. As such, the first application was the Evolution Matrix (2001), a visualization created in CodeCrawler by Michele Lanza. Later on, more research was invested in understanding the evolution of systems, resulting in the development of Van (2002).

Because the evolution analysis requires large amounts of data to be manipulated, it was not feasible anymore to manipulate all the model information all the time. Also, the computation of the metrics beforehand for all entities in the model was another bottleneck. As a consequence, several services were implemented: partial loading of the models, lazy computation of the properties, and caching of results.

It became apparent that the meta-descriptions are a powerful way of separating the data representation (i.e., the meta-model) from the different techniques to manipulate this data. Originally started by Stéphane Ducasse, we implemented a MOF-like meta-meta-model (2002) and replaced the original entity-relationship one. This new meta-meta-model offered an architecture similar to that of the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF).

User Contributed Notes

euan.mee (10 January 2013, 5:39 pm)

Final line of last para:

 

"Framwork" should be "Framework"

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Para. 1

 

"With the introduction of the XMI standard, a first MOF meta-meta-model was implemented and CDIF meta-models were transformed into MOF meta-models for the XMI model generation. However, MOF was not used as the underlying Moose meta-meta-model."

 

First mention of XMI, MOF, and CDIF should include expansions of those abbreviations.

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