Generating diagram editors with DiaMeta

DiaGen [Min02] is a project at the University of the Federal Armed Forces Germany, Munich that utilizes hypergraph grammars for the specification of modeling languages. From such a specification DiaGen generates a corresponding diagram editor which empowers its users to successfully complete their software development projects using the underlying modeling language. As a matter of fact, most editor developers are not used to specify a modeling language using (graph) grammars. Rather they are used to class diagrams as provided by the UML for instance. Informally spoken, MOF class diagrams are UML class diagrams except of some features as n-ary associations, aggregations, and so on. By design MOF is a language for specifying modeling languages as UML, hence, the metamodel of the UML has been specified in MOF. Therefore, it is desirable to allow editor developers for the specification of modeling languages using MOF. DiaMeta [Min06] replaces hypergraph grammars by MOF as provided by our MOFLON tool suite. DiaMeta utilizes MOFLON's compiler to generate JMI code that constitutes the repository for models that are created by users of the to be generated diagram editor. In return, DiaMeta turns MOFLON into a full-fledged meta case tool that allows its users not only to specify domain-specific modeling languages but also to generate corresponding diagram editors.