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AW: [jwt-dev] Feedback on GMF analysis
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Hi Pierre,
thanks for your feedback. It provides some valuable insight into the current
development status of the GMF project. Indeed, it seems that as the GMF
environment becomes more stable its popularity has increased quite a bit but
as you have pointed out, it is probably still very difficult for someone who
is completely new to the EMF/GEF world to create a graphical editor from
scratch.
The separation of model and view data is a very important feature in GMF and
we're currently working on doing this in JWT, also separating the meta model
completely from the editor.
It would be interesting to do a comparison between features that are
automatically provided by GMF with JWT's features. As mentioned, I'm not
quite up-to-date with GMF but considering the work done in the last I hope
we're doing quite well. But you are right, we need to make sure we have the
features that convince people to use JWT instead of creating their own
editor. A swimlane view would be a nice example for as far as I know, this
doesn't come with GMF ;)
Regards,
Chris
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: jwt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jwt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx]
> Im Auftrag von Pierre Vigneras
> Gesendet: Donnerstag, 12. März 2009 16:05
> An: jwt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Betreff: [jwt-dev] Feedback on GMF analysis
>
> Dear all,
>
> I would like to share my "personnal" vision on our study of GMF
> technology and
> its relevance in the case of the JWT project (and its extension).
>
> My opinion is the following (to be short):
>
> - EMF is quite mature and is fine to be used. But it is definitely the
> core of
> a GMF designer. In the case of JWT, the fact that the meta-model is
> UML-AD
> based, may lead to some problems for the implementation of a BPMN
> extension
> (as we have seen with the And/Xor stuff).
>
> - GMF Runtime is also quite mature now. The problem I personnaly found
> is with
> the GMF tooling which is quite buggy and not as user-friendly as I
> would like
> it to be. GMF is quite complex. The learning curve seems to be quite
> huge (as
> it is based on GEF, which itself is based on JFace/SWT and Eclipse/PDE,
> Eclipse/JDT, and so on ;-)).
>
> - GMF is based on models extensively. In particular, it imposes a clear
> separation between the business model (BPMN or UML-AD) and its
> graphical
> representation. This leads to a better overall design. For example,
> location
> of elements is stored separetely from elements themselves. We have seen
> in
> JWT that we are facing similar problems when considering swimlanes.
>
> - GMF makes generic/extensible designers irrelevant somewhat since it
> has been
> specifically design to ease the making of specific designers. I mean,
> if you
> need a new designer, GMF makes it "easy" to create a new specific one
> from
> scratch. Therefore making a GMF designer extensible/generic may sound
> strange
> in this context.
>
> - GMF provides from scratch many cool stuff (ArrangeAll, Print Preview,
> Snap
> to Grid, Snap to Object, Cut/Paste, Undo, and so on). Those stuff must
> be
> provided by JWT, at least.
>
>
> Conclusion: IMHO, there is no equivalent AFAIK, of GMF/Eclipse.
> Therefore,
> whenever you need a designer (such as JWT), your single option is
> making one
> from scratch (or using some API that may help a bit). In that case, you
> are
> free to use the technology you want, and in particular, web ones. But
> unless
> you need also an IDE (as it is the case with the Bonita designer,
> designing a
> Business Process also involve coding in Java), Eclipse is a must. In
> that
> case, the trend is definitely towards GMF-based specific designers. I
> personnaly find that GMF has a lot of weak points (in particular the
> tooling
> which is both buggy and undocumented) but there is no equivalent
> currently
> AFAIK.
>
> Finally, considering JWT, since its purpose is to provide an extensible
> designer, it is quite fine to make it using GEF only (and not GMF). On
> the
> other side, JWT will have to provide much more features in order to get
> a
> benefit extending it instead of creating an ad-hoc GMF-based designer
> from
> scratch.
>
> Regards.
> --
> Pierre Vignéras
> Bull, Architect of an Open World TM
> *BPM Team*, Bull R&D
> 1, rue de Provence
> 38130 Echirolles (France)
> Direct Line: +33-4-76-29-74-06
>
> *Orchestra*, The BPEL open source project: http://orchestra.ow2.org
> *Bonita*, The XPDL open source project: http://bonita.ow2.org
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