What's New in 6.0

 

Repository-Based Collaborative Work

Share models and representations

Obeo Designer 6.0 allows you to store your models and representations (diagrams, tables, trees) in a CDO repository to facilitate collaborative work with other team members. The same representation can now be edited simultaneously by several users located in different places.

 

To avoid unnecessary locks on model elements, Obeo Designer 6.0 provides two locking strategies :

 

Implicit lock

  • Any object being edited is automatically locked.
  • As soon as an object is locked, other users are notified by a specific icon visible on all the representations where the object is visible.
  • The lock is automatically released once the modifications are saved.

 

Explicit lock

  • It is also possible to explicitly lock objects to avoid their modifications by other users.
  • The lock is released on demand.

 

Modeling Projects

Obeo Designer 6 comes with a new kind of projects ("Modeling") which facilitates the management of models and their representations.

 

Automatic model detection

  • All models present in a Modeling project are automatically registered by the project.
  • The available viewpoints corresponding to the models are proposed and can be activated from the project.
  • Models present in other projects can be associated explicitly to the current Modeling project

 

Removal of Model Content view

The semantic model can be explored directly from the Project Explorer (under the model file).

The representations contained in the Modeling project are accessible from the Project Explorer (under the .aird file or under the semantic model file).

New representations can be created directly from the project.

 

New Perspectives

Two perspectives are now provided by Obeo Designer 6.0 to distinguish two activities: the creation and the usage of a graphical designer.

 

The Modeling perspective

This new perspective is dedicated to the users of a graphical designer.

It provides two main additional menus:

  • New Modeling Project : creation of a project containing a local model
  • New Shared Modeling Project : creation of a project containing a model shared via a CDO repository

 

The Viewpoint perspective

This perspective (formerly named "Design" in version 5.0) is dedicated to the architects who create or edit a new graphical designer.

It contains all the features of the Modeling perspective plus additional features to manage Ecore and Viewpoint Specification projects.

The "File" menu provides

  • Viewpoint Specification Project: creates a new project to define your graphical designer.
  • Ecore Modeling Project: creates a project containing a new domain model

 

This perspective also provides the Interpreter view which allows the architect to evaluate expressions (see Acceleo 3 requestor)

 

Further integration with Acceleo 3

Acceleo 3 is an implementation of the Object Management Group (OMG) MOF Model to Text Language (MTL) standard. It can be used to query a model and retrieve elements to be displayed on a representation.

 

Acceleo 3 to define expressions

Acceleo 3 can now be used to define the logic of the representations (expressions in the .odesign file).

This integration provides more security and productivity to define a modeling workbench:

  • Smart completion when entering new expressions
  • Static validation of expressions

 

Acceleo 3 requestor

The requestor (the tool which allows you to dynamically evaluate expressions with an existing model) has been replaced by the one already provided by Acceleo 3 (see New Interpreter View)

 

New Diagram Customization Features

Obeo Designer 6.0 provides new representation possibilities and better user experience.

 

Vectorial images

SVG format can be used to improve the rendering of your diagrams

  • Basic shapes (square, stroke, triangle, dot and ring) have been replaced by SVG images.
  • You can use your own SVG images

 

Copy/Paste customization

In many cases, the copy of a model element should not only copy this element, but also copy related objects and modify them according to the paste context. In order to manage such cases, a new tool (Paste) has been added to allow you to specify what should happen when you copy/paste a model element.

 

 

Edge on Edge

With Obeo Designer 6.0, an edge can now be connected to another edge. It allows you to define representations such as Association Class in UML.

 

Multiple labels on edges

With Obeo Designer 6.0, it is now possible to define three different labels on an edge:

  • For the edge itself
  • For the source of the edge
  • For the target of the edge

Each label can be defined separately with its own style (color, font, ...)

 

New Layouting Mode

This new mode, which can be activated from the diagram toolbar, allows the user to protect the semantic model while reorganizing a diagram.

It avoids mistakenly changing properties or links related to model elements present on the diagram.

 

New Code Generation Features

Obeo Designer 6.0 integrates Acceleo 3.2.

Compared to Obeo Designer 5.0 (based on Acceleo 3.0), this new version comes with many major improvements.

 

Documentation of templates, queries and modules.

Comments can be integrated within a template, the generated text will not include them.

 

The documentation is exploited by hovers and code completion

Support for TODO and FIXME

TODO and FIXME tags are detected and presented in the Tasks view.

Better error detection

Improved real time error detection with new errors detected and warning support.

Project creation wizard

Brand new wizard for the creation of new projects and new modules.

When creating a new Acceleo project, you can now choose the JRE of your choice.

New outline view

The new outline view uses colors and filters to facilitate access to the right template or query.

New refactoring options

  • Extract as query: to create a new query from a simple text selection
  • Pull up: to pull some templates or queries into another module and have all the inheritance links plugged.
  • Generate documentation

 

Ant and Maven support

The compilation and the generation can be launched with dedicated Ant tasks.

Acceleo can also generate tycho based pom.xml files to build an Acceleo project with Maven.

 

Compilation & Performances

  • Performances have been improved for the compilation and the tooling.
  • It is now possible to execute standalone compilations.
  • Acceleo modules can now be compiled into binary resources.

New Interpreter view

This new interpreter comes with new functionalities:

  • Syntax highlighting
  • Smart completion
  • Static validation
  • Saving of variables
  • Deactivation of real-time interpretation
  • Saving of expression into a template or a query

 

Eclipse 3.7 (Indigo) as the Reference Platform

Obeo Designer 6.0 is based on Eclipse 3.7 (Indigo).

It still supports 3.5 (Galileo) and 3.6 (Helios).

 

 

Read the Change Log to discover the many other improvements provided by Obeo Designer 6.0

Read What's new in Obeo Designer 5.0 to see the new and noteworthy features of previous version.