NOTE: This project has been retired, and there will be no more updates. Other future projects may reuse some concepts presented here.Projects having incubation status are to promote some new ideas, develop innovative software solutions and convince skeptics that proposed solutions can support the software development process. Therefore, we can close incubation projects if they do not deliver sound results.
Developers using the CA Gen have some tools allowing them to work with the CA Gen models. Those tools are dedicated to real development efforts or helping in managing the development process. You can learn more about all CA Gen tools offered by CA Technologies here. There are also tools delivered by third parties extending standard instrumentation providing handy additional functions. The nature of those tools is to create or supporting a rather a closed development environment providing all-in-one software applications. CA Gen offers the possibility to include in the final solution non-Gen software components or to use some Gen software components by non-Gen applications.
The objective of the JGen Notes Nature project is creating universal platform easying “injection” of some CA Gen features into the third-party development process. We choose very popular Eclipse Platform as base and environment to build on top of it. So, anybody using Eclipse as a development platform will be able to associate CA Gen model as part of their development process under the condition that they are using the Eclipse. The minimum functionality will be to add a nature to the Eclipse project with some basic functionality allowing to connect to the CA Gen model. Proposed solution is using standard mechanism offered by the Eclipse Platform to include third-party functionality.
Project Natures in Eclipse
Eclipse IDE is using Project Natures to configure projects in the workspace. One project may consist of several project natures. Usually, Eclipse installation offers some new project natures like Java Nature. You can convert your project via the context menu. Adding project nature usually creates some additional folders, libraries, menu items, and things such as a decorator image applied to a project icon to indicate that it is not a default project only.
Deliverables
The JGen Notes Nature will come as one or more Eclipse Plug-ins. It will be enough to download them and drop to the Eclipse drop-in directory to activate them. The basic functionality will include functions as follows:
- ability to associate selected CA Gen model with the project,
- will add Java Nature if the project does not have such nature associated yet,
- provide basic navigator view showing contents of the model,
- walkency utility allowing navigate thru the metadata of the associated model,
- generation of sources in Java from the associated model (optional),
- creating used-added functions (optional).
Summary
The project is using the following software:
- Windows 10
- CA Gen 8.6 (Free)
- Java Version 8 (Update 20)
- Eclipse Oxygen
- Xtext 2.12.0
- Xtend 2.11