Nov 8th, 2006
Just discovered an opensource MDA code generator tool from Obeo called Acceleo.
Features includes integration within Eclipse, native use of EMF, development environment (template editor with syntax highlighting, reflective editor, real time error detection, …), the ability to target any technology as it is based on the use of templates, and compatibility with XMI/UML 2.0 or 1.4, so you could integrate it with Rational Software Modeler, Poseidon or Topcased among others.
In the documentation page, you will find a quickstart guide if you want to catch up with it.
(Via Software architecture and design thoughts)
Nov 7th, 2006
“Taking the Rational Out of RUP“, an article from SD Times, explains how Unified Process is moving well beyond its roots, with the new Essential Unified Process (EssUP), a lightweight variation developed by Ivar Jacobson, and Open Unified Process (OpenUP), the Eclipse Process Framework software development process.
Both sets of best practices are not simply variants, they have been written from the ground up, and they share a common goal of streamlining software development and moving agile practices in the mainstream
Others re-purposed methods not included in the article are Agile Unified Process (AUP), a simplified version by Scott Ambler, and Enterprise Unified Process (EUP), an extension of the RUP for enterprises.
Nov 7th, 2006
I have enjoyed reading the “Object Oriented CASE Tools: Lost Opportunities and Future Directions” article at developer.*
I have spent more than 15 years designing and developing in-house case tools for our legacy systems (more than 1.000 developers). I have implemented almost all of the “Traditional CASE tools” features described in the article, and they have proved that they are necessary to archive a very productive development environment.
Now, we are focusing our efforts on distributed systems, and specifically, in OO environments. We have a current discussion about which is the best strategy towards our toolset in these environments. On one side, there is the opinion that we must use OO COTS tools; and on the other side, that we must developed our own tools following the guidelines of the traditional case tools. The absence of some of the features stated in the article is inclining the balance towards the second option (the traditional one). Some features, as the central repository relying on databases, are essentials in environments focused in the reusability of the artifacts, and with OO COTS tools you can’t implement them, with or without “frameworks”. They seem designed for individual developers or small teams and not for a big enterprise.
Nov 6th, 2006
The ACM “Hello World” project is attempting to collect examples for as many languages and related programming environments (shells etc.) as possible. Could you contribute with a new one?
PD: My favourite one, the IBM 1401 self loading card.
Nov 4th, 2006
Like Yahoo, IBM is organizing a Hack Day. I wonder if this event will be a open hack day or it will be closed to IBM’ers. It will be nice to hack some of the IBM/Rational tools!
You could find more information about this event at Kellypuffs blog.
Updated: this event will be held the week of Dec 11-15 and it’s an internal hack day.
Thanks for spreading the word!
IBM held our first Hack Day last summer, a spur-of-the-moment activity generated by my post about Yahoo!’s Hack Day on my internal blog. In two weeks, we threw together a 1/2 day event with * 57 entries * 54 unique teams (some teams had multiple submissions) * 64 unique IBMers participating (some had multiple entries)* categories: 37 Programming, 16 Ideas, 4 Design
As we figure out where to go with this, it would be great to have an Open Hack Day event with participants outside of IBM, and that’s one of the options being considered. But my guess is that for December’s effort (jeez, that’s only a few weeks away) it will probably be an internal effort.
Ferran, it is great for us IBMers to know that there is customer awareness of our Hack Day!
Regarding next week’s hack day, please, do let us know any hacking ideas that you have: I bet that there will be hackers looking for projects (e.g. me :-)), and anything you suggest can ring someone’s bell.
And we can even take this one step further. Instead of the solo-hacking I did for the firts edition, I’m trying to assemble an IBM Barcelona team for next week; it will be hard, because year end is never easy, but I’ll try to bug some friends. Can we try to work together on this? Can we try to do a proof of concept of having customer involvement in ibm’s hack day? It won’t be easy to arrange, since we don’t have a lot of time, but I think that it is worth trying.
Xavier, thanks a lot for your comment. I’ll send you a private email with some ideas.
