Anthony Hunter

The Eclipse Graphical Modeling Framework (GMF) provides a generative component and runtime infrastructure for developing a Domain Specific Modeler (DSM). GMF is based on the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) and Graphical Editing Framework (GEF) and is a powerful platform for any developer who wishes to use these two technologies in their application.

The GMF generation component is a model-driven approach to generating graphical editors. By defining a tooling, graphical and mapping model definition, one can generate a fully functional graphical editor based on the GMF Runtime.

The GMF runtime is an industry proven application framework over EMF and GEF. It provides a number of features out of the box:

• A set of reusable components for graphical editors, such as printing, image export, actions and toolbars and much more.
• A standardized model to describe diagram elements, which separates between the semantic (domain) and notation (diagram) elements.
• A command infrastructure that bridges the different command frameworks used by EMF and GEF.
• An extensible framework that allows graphical editors to be open and extendible.

In this long talk, we first will demonstrate how to build a DSM with GMF. We highlight the many features of the GMF Runtime that one would have to code by hand if using EMF and GMF directly. We will contrast the generation of an graphical editor based on the GMF Runtime, versus that based on the GEF framework alone.

Secondly we will demonstrate the various extensibility options provided by GMF. We will discuss several specific methods to customize your graphical editor. We will also discuss migrating existing custom shapes to the diagram, giving examples of both GEF Draw2d figures and image files such as GIF and SVG.

Anthony Hunter is a software development manager at IBM Rational Software in Canada. Anthony is a committer for the Eclipse GMF and GEF projects as well as committer for the Tabbed Properties View in the Eclipse platform. Anthony contributes to the Rational modeling product lines, including IBM Rational Software Architect. Anthony has historically contributed to WebSphere Studio Application Developer and IBM Rational XDE and has been actively working with the Eclipse platform since its inception.

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