MoDisco/Components/XML/Documentation/0.9

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XML Metamodel

Definition

Ecore Generic XML metamodel definition

Concepts are described in W3C XML Recommendation (document and logical structures sections). Concepts for Document Types Declarations are not managed here. Note : there is no composite 'ownedAttribute' reference between Element and Attribute type to avoid ambiguous duplicate owning possibilities considering 'chidren' reference.

Requirements

To use the plug-in you need:

• JDK 1.5 or above
• a version of Eclipse 3.5 or above with the following set of plug-ins installed
  • EMF 2.5.0 or higher

Install

Install from SVN

• connect to the SVN repository with anonymous access :

URL = https://dev.eclipse.org/svnroot/modeling/org.eclipse.mdt.modisco

• navigate in repository following 'plugins/trunk' path.
• check-out the project named 'org.eclipse.gmt.modisco.infra.xml.core' .
• Use "export" menu to export this project as a plug-in (Deployable plug-ins and fragments) in your Eclipse installation. Don't forget to choose the "Package plug-ins as individual jar archives" option.
• restart Eclipse to take in account this plug-in

XML Discoverer

The goal of the Generic XML Discoverer plug-in is to allow generic extractions of XML information from a XML file, without the need for a metamodel dedicated to a conforming Document Type Definition(DTD) or XML Schema Description (XSD).

Details

Considering XML files conforming to DTD or XSD, it will be more convenient to have some dedicated metamodels to manipulate information. However, Generic XML Discoverer is an alternative for miscellaneous XML files (no or uncommon DTD/XSD).

This plug-in aims at analyzing any XML file providing a model describing the information found, conforming to the Generic XML metamodel. Moreover, it allows to serialize the xml file back from the model. Thus, some M2M transformations might be used jointly to upgrade some xml files.

Since the metamodel is a subset of W3C XML concepts, the end user should be aware of some limitations in serializing back some advanced XML contents.

Requirements

To use the plug-in you need:

• JDK 1.5 or above
• a version of Eclipse 3.5 or above with the following set of plugins installed
  • EMF 2.5.0 or higher
  • Discoverers Manager
  • Generic XML metamodel

User manual

Discovering and browsing from contextual menu

Right-click on a XML file and select the XML discoverer (Discovery > Discoverers > Discover XML Model...):

Menu in Eclipse to discover a XML model

A discovery parameters dialog opens to let you specify the parameters of the discovery:

• Set SERIALIZE_TARGET to true if you want to save the model to a file
• You can define TARGET_URI to the location of a file in your workspace. If it is not defined and SERIALIZE_TARGET is true, a model file with a default name will be created in the project.
  Beware: the file will be overwritten if it already exists!

Once launched, a progress dialog will appear as soon as the operation begins. Depending on the size of your file, the reverse engineering process might take some time to complete:

At the end of the process, the newly created model file is added to the root of your project if you set SERIALIZE_TARGET to true:

XML model in the package explorer

And the model is opened in the default model browser if you selected Open model in editor after discovery:

XML model viewed with the MoDisco model browser

The model file for the XML file (with a filename ending in "_xml.xmi" by convention) can be opened in any model browser:

"Open With" on a XML model

Discovering and serializing from Java

The plugin exposes a java class which allows to launch the discovering of XML model from a file (within the workspace or not), and get the resulting model. Some options can be set for the discovering operation :

• OPTION_IGNORE_WHITESPACES : a parameter for indicating to ignore white spaces in text portions.
• OPTION_LIGHTWEIGHT_MODEL : to minimize the memory size of obtained model. If set to true : comments are ignored, text portions with only spaces and line delimiters are ignored.
• OPTION_SILENT_MODE : a parameter to indicate if a browser should be opened on model after discovering.

The XML content can be serialized back since the model elements are contained in a dedicated org.eclipse.emf.ecore.resource.Resource implementation.

For more details see java documentation on DiscoverXMLModel class.

Install

Install from SVN

• connect to the SVN repository with anonymous access :

URL = https://dev.eclipse.org/svnroot/modeling/org.eclipse.mdt.modisco

• navigate in repository following the 'plugins/trunk' path.
• check-out the project named 'org.eclipse.gmt.modisco.infra.xml.discoverer' .
• Use the "export" menu to export this project as a plug-in (Deployable plug-ins and fragments) in your Eclipse installation. Don't forget to choose the "Package plug-ins as individual jar archives" option.
• restart Eclipse to take this plug-in into account