[news.eclipse.technology.ldt] Re: Role of EMF in LDT

["Ted Carroll" <tcarroll@xxxxxxx>]

The focus is about language development in general, with the full knowledge 
that if we don't produce something that adds value in the Java case, we're 
probably not doing the right thing.

Part of that is trying to arrive at a representation of an AST that is 
language independent without being so devoid of semantics that you can't 
build useful features on top of it.

To that end, I'm familiar with EMF but I'm wanting to understand what you'd 
see as the advantages of using EMF and what, if any pitfals, you could 
imagine.

Thanks,

Ted Carroll
BEA Systems, Inc.

Part of the project is making a a generalized AST that can be reused across 
multiple languages.
"Philipp W. Kutter, A4M AG" <philipp@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message 
news:d0n5ki$a3r$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Dear all.
>
> Is the focus of this project to make the existing Java JDT Datamodel
> easier reusable for Java like languages?
>
> In this case, the project name should probably be "JDT Reusability"
> which is a very interesting topic.
>
> If the focus is about "language development" in general, the first 
> question is how are the abstact syntax trees of the languages represented. 
> Some people may hint to XML, but given the ease of mapping XML to UML and 
> back, UML seems to me the first class choice for this.
>
>
> Wouln't then EMF be the natural choice for supporting any data model for 
> abstract syntax defined via UML?
>
>
> By the way, this would not exclude the first goal, e.g. making the Java 
> JDT Datamodel easier reusable for Java like languages. One could
> do this by mapping the existing, highly optimized JDT Datamodel to some
> EMF/UML defined model for some language. The design of such a pattern,
> where the regular, normalized EMF generated implementation is
> synchronized with an existing, highly tuned and optimized data-model
> like the JDT data model. To do this design would be a highly
> interesting task. Another topic would be to generate JDT like code from
> EMF models.
>
>
> I hope this is not completly out of scope, but we as a tiny company
> are using EMF for all abstract syntax trees in a tool that generates a 
> language implementation from its specification. It may be an
> interesting choice for the here proposed Language Development Toolkit
> as well.
>
> Other tools that are built in this way are the new Rational Modeler, or
> a number of Websphere products. I have only worked with the Modeler.
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Philipp Kutter
> www.montages.com