[news.eclipse.modeling] Re: Should UML be used in an Agile Project ?

[Ed Merks <Ed.Merks@xxxxxxxxx>]

Vlag,

Comments below.

Vlad Varnica wrote:
> Eike,
>
> The round trip should be at the Ecore to UML superstructure and UML to 
> Ecore level and mixing model information inside java code is not 
> recommended.
Should be according to whom and recommended by whom?  All this is just 
"The World According to Vlad" while you make it out to be something 
carved in stone tablets handed down to us on a high mountain.
> Not recommended because if you refactor your code then you loose your 
> model
You're confusing what's possible with refactoring tools and what's 
currently implemented.  Changing the names of things in your model will 
typically break all your serialized instances as well, so it's not as if 
you can just merrily make arbitrary changes without impact.  And 
besides, if you extracted the Ecore model from the code, refactored the 
code and refactored the model, and then regenerated, you'd have 
up-to-date annotations; it's not hard to imagine a tool helping with 
this slightly longer manual process. 

In the end, I don't think round trip engineering is the panacea you make 
it out to be.
> If you annotate you java code classes then your get a dirty java code :-)
You also seem to miss the point that Java source code doesn't haven 
enough information to tell you if something is a containment reference 
or not; clearly there needs to be more information than just the Java 
source.
> The java detection using native JDT  which unify Ecore/UML is the only 
> possible solution in order to cover agile iteration.
As Eike pointed out, you're talking about round trip engineering, not 
agile development.  You might choose to see them as the same, but it's 
just buzzword soup as far as I'm concerned.
> The omondo architecture is based on Java and UML Ids both of them need 
> are used at different stages.
And how did you get your UML IDs in out and out of your Java without 
getting the Java dirty?

Some clients use dynamic Ecore directly without generating any Java 
code.  I suppose you can't get more Agile than that!
>