[osee-dev] OSEE Type Definition using Xtext

["Brooks, Ryan D" <ryan.d.brooks@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Importing an OSEE types spreadsheet may yield different results (with no
notification of this fact) depending upon on what other spreadsheets are
imported at the same time (not just because of potential inconsistent
definitions, but also because of type inheritance that is flattened in
the database but exists in the spreadsheets).  These and other related
issues have been eloquently solved by the Eclipse community using domain
specific languages (DSL) that describes the domain model in a format
that can be validated, prevents redundancy, and properly preserves the
type inheritance information.  Xtext allows the creation of DSLs and
auto-generation of much of the needed code.  Xtext would allow OSEE to
simply describe the grammar and auto-generate the code needed for the
editor, validation, in memory model, loading and saving.  It also
provides an import mechanism analogous to that used by Java to making
importing type information residing in multiple files reliable and easy.
A good introduction to Xtext is provided at
http://www.peterfriese.de/getting-started-with-xtext/.  The first pass
at defining a grammar for the OSEE types model using Xtext is
https://dev.eclipse.org/svnroot/technology/org.eclipse.osee/trunk/org.ec
lipse.osee.framework.types/src/org/eclipse/osee/framework/OseeTypes.xtex
t

Thanks,
Ryan Brooks