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Ph.D. - geht es zur Homepage der Informatik des Fachbereiches 3 ...

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3.4. Conclusion<br />

3.3.4. MetaEdit+<br />

MetaEdit+ [56] is a commercial application for creating DSLs. It us<strong>es</strong> the GOPRR meta<br />

meta model and is very specialised for the development of graphical meta models and models.<br />

The code is generated from graphs using the MetaEdit+ Reporting Language (MERL) [56].<br />

MERL do<strong>es</strong> not depend on any certain programming framework, like Ecore, and therefore<br />

code for any kind of programming language can be generated. Moreover, it provid<strong>es</strong> easier<br />

generator development because it only us<strong>es</strong> the concrete syntax, as in Figure 3.19 and 3.20, for<br />

certain graph typ<strong>es</strong>. The abstract syntax from Figure 3.17 and Figure 3.18 is not visible to<br />

MERL. Also, generators can be r<strong>es</strong>tricted to certain graph typ<strong>es</strong> and cannot be used on the<br />

project-level. In contrast to all other DSM applications mentioned before, MetaEdit+ is the<br />

only one that provid<strong>es</strong> a development standard on an industrial level. Since this work focus<strong>es</strong><br />

on safety-critical systems, this fact cannot simply be ignored.<br />

The main disadvantage of MetaEdit+, related to this work, is that no FLOSS version is<br />

available.<br />

3.4. Conclusion<br />

Although a full FLOSS tool chain – including the DSM development applications – fits the aim<br />

of this work better, MetaEdit+ as commercial software offers several advantag<strong>es</strong> that cannot be<br />

simply ignored. Compared to the other applications and their meta meta models, MetaEdit+<br />

is highly specialised for the development of graphical DSLs. Additionally, it provid<strong>es</strong> a script<br />

language for generator development that do<strong>es</strong> not depend on certain programming languag<strong>es</strong>.<br />

Furthermore, the usage of the introduced FLOSS applications would always cause additional<br />

development effort for the tooling because none provid<strong>es</strong> graphical modelling and general<br />

generation in one. Due to the fact that a complete tool development should not be in the main<br />

scope of this work, MetaEdit+ and the GOPRR meta meta model are employed for this work.<br />

To be able to publish all parts work the corr<strong>es</strong>ponding case study in Part III, any meta model<br />

and model can be exported to an appropriate XML format like XMI [61]. Such fil<strong>es</strong> are then<br />

free for publication un<strong>der</strong> any license and are not limited to a certain application.<br />

37

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