Fujaba4Eclipse (F4E)
Fujaba4Eclipse is a set of Eclipse plug-ins that integrate Fujaba into the Eclipse platform. The software engineering research goup in Paderborn started developing Fujaba4Eclipse in 2004. Besides Fujaba's core functionality (modeling a software system's structure and behavior and code generation) many other applications (e.g. reverse engineering) are now further developed as Eclipse plug-ins.
In the past Eclipse, a free and open source multi-language software development environment, has become very popular among software engineers all over the world. A broad variety of tool contributions has come up because of Eclipse’s easy-to-extend plug-in concept and rich IDE framework.
The CASE tool Fujaba provides advanced model driven software engineering functionality enabling developers to design their software based on a formal model and and to refine the model by generating Java source code. Furthermore, Fujaba also supports reverse engineering, model transformations and many other applications.
With Fujaba4Eclipse we combine the advantages of both, Eclipse and Fujaba. On the one hand we use Fujaba’s core which provides features like a UML meta-model or Java code generation. On the other hand we can use Eclipse and its contributions like GEF (Graphical Editing Framework) or EMF (Eclipse Modeling Framework) which reduces our effort on implementation of visual editors in Fujaba4Eclipse compared to implementing the Swing visualization that is used by the stand-alone version of Fujaba.
Fujaba4Eclipse also enables the integration of Fujaba with numerous Eclipse tools in one IDE only, instead of having to use several tools separately. By reducing the size of a software engineer’s tool chain Fujaba4Eclipse simplifies his development process and offers him the tool support that he needs.
Fujaba’s core features are modeling with UML class diagrams, story diagrams (a combination of UML activity diagrams with the Story Pattern graph transformation language) and generating source code based on a formal, graphically specified model. By now, Fujaba4Eclipse integrates all of the mentioned features to Eclipse, even though there are still other Fujaba features that are not fully integrated to Fujaba4Eclipse. Furthermore, Fujaba4Eclipse provides Eclipse extension points and a framework that can be used to contribute to Fujaba4Eclipse and extend its integrated tool suite.
Two of the most important Fujaba4Eclipse contributions are Reclipse and the Fujaba Real-Time Tool Suite. The Reclipse project provides tool support for reverse engineering and re-design of legacy software systems. The Fujaba Real-Time Tool Suite supports component-based software development for embedded real-time systems with MechatronicUML, a customization of UML to mechatronic systems’ engineering requirements.
Installation
Fujaba4Eclipse is available for downlaod via Eclipse's Find And Install feature. In order to install Fujaba4Eclipse run your Eclipse workbench and add http://ag-schaefer.uni-paderborn.de/downloads/eclipse as Remote Site. Select now the Fujaba4Eclipse feature you'd like to install and click on the install button.Open the Fujaba4Eclipse perspective after installation is complete and use the wizards in the New menu to start modeling. Also refer to the Fujaba online help in Eclipse or the Fujaba wiki for more information.
Screenshots
