MagritteA Meta-Driven Approach to Empower

Developers and End Users

Lukas Renggli

Stéphane Ducasse

Adrian Kuhn

University of Bern, Switzerland

Software Composition Group

Roadmap

Problem

Demo

Implementation

Evaluation

Questions

What is the problem?

Rapidly changing

requirements

End users would

know their requirements

What did we see?

Meta-driven

software

Developer defined

meta-model

End user defined

meta-model

Run-time dynamic

meta-model

Domain Model

Metamodel

Meta-

Metamodel

<described-by>

<described-by>

Developer

End User

Domain Model

Metamodel

Meta-

Metamodel

Magritte

Developer

<described-by>

<described-by>

Magritte

End User

How does it work?

Component

TypeComponent

Property

TypeProperty

1 *

1

*

*1

*

1

Type Object

Type Object

(a) Type-Square

Object

Description

Typ

e

Ob

ject

*

*

descrip

tio

n

attributes

1 *

(b) Magritte

[Yoder et al, 2001] Architecture and design of adaptive object models

Component

TypeComponent

Property

TypeProperty

1 *

1

*

*1

*

1

Type Object

Type Object

(a) Type-Square

Object

Description

Typ

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Ob

ject

*

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descrip

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n

attributes

1 *

(b) Magritte

[Yoder et al, 2001] Architecture and design of adaptive object models

Component

TypeComponent

Property

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Type Object

Type Object

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Object

Description

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(b) MagritteComponent

TypeComponent

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Description

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(b) Magritte

Component

TypeComponent

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Description

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(b) Magritte

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Description

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(b) Magritte

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TypeComponent

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Type Object

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Description

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ject

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Description

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Component

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(b) Magritte

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Description

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attributes

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(b) Magritte

Component

TypeComponent

Property

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Description

Typ

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Description

Typ

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attributes

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(b) Magritte

Component

TypeComponent

Property

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Type Object

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Description

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(b) Magritte

Component

TypeComponent

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Description

Typ

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(b) Magritte

Describe Objects

Describe Descriptions

Describe Constraints

Describe Behavior

Squeak is a modern open-source development environment for

the classic Smalltalk-80 programming language. Despite being the

first purely object-oriented language and environment, Smalltalk

is in many ways still far ahead of its successors in promoting a

vision of an environment where everything is an object, and

anything can change at run-time.

Squeak by Example, intended for both students and developers,

will guide you gently through the Squeak language and

environment by means of a series of examples and exercises.

This book is made available under the Creative Commons

Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license. You can either download the

PDF for free, or you can buy a softcover copy from lulu.com.

Additional material is available from the book's web page at

SqueakByExample.org, hosted by the University of Bern,

Switzerland.

Squeak by Example is endorsed by ESUG, the European Smalltalk

User Group. To learn more about Smalltalk and ESUG, see

www.esug.org.

by Example

Square Bracket Associates

with Damien Cassou and Marcus Denker

Version of 2007-09-13

Andrew P. Black, Stéphane Ducasse, Oscar Nierstrasz, Damien Pollet

SqueakSq

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3341027839529

ISBN 978-3-9523341-0-2

Smalltalkwww.squeak.org

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Reflection

Integration with Tools

Class Extension

What can we do with it?

Automatic Views

Automatic Editors

Automatic Validation

Move Page

Automatic Reports

Automatic Querying

Automatic Persistency

What did we gain?

Reduce recurrent workGet rid of

Describe once,

get everywhere

Extensible

Object Model

Adaptive object modelRun-time

Code Generation

End users

customizability

Industrial Users

AareWorkflow definition

and runtime system

Magritte

[Ren

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agrit

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Dec

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www.lukas-renggli.ch

LOC Comparison

SmallWiki

Model

1561 LOC

44%

View

1983 LOC

56%

Pier

Model

3078 LOC

63%

View

1812 LOC

37%

Meta-describedTraditional

0

2,250

4,500

6,750

9,000

Traditional Meta-Described

8,190

2,456

Speed Comparison