[news.eclipse.modeling.gmt.modisco] MoDisco proposal #3709 for EclipseCo

["Jean.Bezivin" <bezivin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A presentation proposal for MoDisco has been submitted to the Eclipsecon'07.
If you want to vote for this proposal, you just need to open an Eclipsezilla 
account
which is very easy and rapid to do. Anybody can open such an account. Then 
you may go to:
http://eclipsezilla.eclipsecon.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3709

The title of the proposed talk is:

"Reverse Engineering in Eclipse with the MoDisco project"

and the abstract follows:
______________________________________________
This talk describes the goals and early achievements of the new MoDisco 
component in the Eclipse Modeling Project (EMP/GMT). MoDisco stands for 
Model Discovery and focuses on defining the basic tools to move real-life 
unstructured and heterogeneous data to the homogeneous technical space of 
model engineering where a number of regular operators like model 
transformation may be systematically applied. MoDisco is initially supported 
by the new ModelPlex European FP6 Integrated project. When applicable, the 
project uses related OMG software modernization standards like KDM and ASTM.
Reverse engineering is classically defined as the process of analyzing a 
subject system with the double goal of (1) identifying the system's 
components and their interrelationships, and (2) of creating representations 
of the system in another form or at a higher level of abstraction.
As part of the Eclipse Modeling Project, MoDisco provides the tools and 
methods to create multiple representations of legacy systems as full fledged 
EMF models, as expressed in XMI. The objective of this talk is to show how 
to use MoDisco to create discoverers, which are executable programs that 
analyze input data and produce models conforming to precise metamodels.
The central principle in MoDisco is that the generation of discoverers is 
always completely metamodel driven. This allows to propose general 
guidelines and to provide generic support tools. From a given system (e.g., 
a COBOL, PL/1 or Java program, a Unix System, or the Eclipse framework 
itself), it is often possible to extract static architectural models or 
dynamic execution trace models. We use notations (expressed in either KM3, 
Ecore, or Emfatic) to base the discovery process on these precisely defined 
metamodels.
The talk will define a generic model discovery process and introduce some 
common tools. Throughout the presentation, a number of use cases will be 
presented to illustrate the MoDisco approach. These use cases will offer 
real-life concrete and practical examples of reverse engineering operations 
that could be practically applied. The talk will discuss some of these 
examples in detail and briefly mention several others that will be 
contributed by the MoDisco user community.
After defining a common reverse engineering process and a set of standard 
support tools, the variety of legacy system discovery operations is quite 
high. To delimit the application areas, a classification of legacy systems 
will be presented. For example, some systems are syntactical and may be 
described by a grammar. In such cases, the discovery involves the study of 
the relations between the grammar of the legacy system and the metamodel of 
the target model. Many tools may be found in other Eclipse projects to 
handle this situation. In other cases, legacy systems may have a completely 
different nature (e.g. database oriented, Web oriented) and different 
solutions may have to be elaborated and supported by other existing Eclipse 
projects.
To summarize, the MoDisco project intends to help cross the boundary between 
real legacy applications and EMF models. Due to the heterogeneous nature of 
the artifacts comprising these applications (e.g., code as data, 
semi-structured data, database sources, tool proprietary data), the various 
contributions will take different forms, but all parts of the project will 
follow the same metamodel driven methodological approach and use a common 
set of Eclipse provided tools. The talk will give several concrete examples 
of model discovery and will also show how the resulting models may be 
processed at later stages by standard EMP tools to provide real value to the 
end-user (e.g., verification, measure, comparison, regeneration).
______________________________________________

All the best,

Jean