unfortunately
that had to wait because I was busy finishing my
Master Thesis.
did you ;) ?
If possible can you send me a copy ? even of a draft version
The final version of my Master Thesis is available to download from
the SCG repository. It covers Magritte and Pier and should give some
insight and additional documentation about the use and the
implementation of those frameworks. It can be downloaded from:
<http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~scg/cgi-bin/oobib.cgi?
query=Reng06a&abstract=yes>
Abstract:
Developing applications that end users can customize is a challenge,
since end users are domain experts but still have concrete
requirements. In this master thesis we present how we used a meta-
driven approach to support the end user customization of Web
applications. We present Magritte, a recursive meta-data meta-model
integrated into the Smalltalk reflective meta-model. The adaptive
model of Magritte enables to not only describe existing classes but
also let end users build their own meta-models on the fly. Further on
we describe how meta-interpreters automatically build views, reports,
validating editors and persistency mechanisms.
As a complete example of how we applied a meta-model to a Web
application we present Pier, the second version of a fully object-
oriented implementation of a content management system and Wiki
engine. Pier is implemented with objects from the top to the bottom
and is designed to be customizable to accommodate new needs. The
integration of a powerful meta-description layer makes it a breeze to
extend the running system with new functionality without having to
patch the core engine.
We describe the lessons learned from using the Magritte meta-model to
build applications. Both projects described in this thesis are open
source and can be downloaded from the Web site of the author.
Have fun,
Lukas
--
Lukas Renggli
http://www.lukas-renggli.ch