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What is the difference between Acceleo and Xpand?

I have a DSL which is based on a custom metamodel, which in its turn is based on EMF/Ecore. I am trying to figure out which solution to choose, and I cant find any decent comparisons anywhere.
Does anyone have any reasons why I should choose one over the other?
What I know so far is that Acceleo uses a OMG standardized language, but it seems harder to use than Xpand.

First of all, I wonder why you consider Acceleo more difficult to learn than Xpand, while both languages have differences (blocks and delimiters for example) they have quite a similar structure. I won't details all the elements in both languages but, for example, I don't see such a difference between something like:
«FOREACH myAttributes AS a»«a.name»«ENDFOREACH»
and
[for (a: Attribute|myAttributes)][a.name/][/for]
Both are template based languages and as such they have quite the same structure. The main difference between Acceleo and Xpand comes from the fact that Acceleo is based on the standards MOFM2T and OCL from the OMG and the tooling.
I am not very familiar with Xpand tooling but you can find more about it on their wiki. Acceleo on the other side contains an editor with syntax highlighting, code completion, error detection, refactoring and more. It also contains a debugger, a profiler, Ant and Maven support. You can also easily deploy your generators as Eclipse plugin for other users or use them out of Eclipse in a regular Java application. You can find more information on Acceleo here. You can see in videos most of the features of Acceleo on the Obeo Network (registration required).
Finally, the latest activity on xPand as occurred a year ago while Acceleo is actively developed. You can even follow the Acceleo development on github if you want.
Stephane Begaudeau
Disclaimer: I am one of the member of the Acceleo dev' team.

I am a dabbler, not an expert.
My impression is that if you need little more than a templating language, then Xpand is the way to go. Otherwise, pick Acceleo - but as you say, the learning curve is very steep.
When do you need more than a templating language? For me, they seem to run out of gas when the structure (not content) of the output is dependent on multiple independent pieces of the input. If you don't want to get into Acceleo, but have one of these cases, consider inventing an auto-generated "shim" language that gets you partway from input language to output language, perhaps with a lot of redundancy in it to avoid lookups at template-generation time.

I've been using the old 2.x Acceleo on a full scalled project and done some test with the new one.
The langage is pretty easy to use, but with the new version it's a little bit more difficult to bind some
java code to your template when the script langage is not enought.
I was a very big fan of the 2.x, but with the 3.x, I add lots of troubles to make it work. You have to write java code to handle eclipse resources for instance. I totaly gave up when updating to juno, my acceleo projects didn't worked anymore and I didn't manage to correct it in two days. I hope they will make it easier to use out of the box.

Basically the main difference is that ACCELEO is an implementation of the MOF Models To Text Transformation Language which is the OMG (Object Management Group) Standard for the definition of Models to Text transformation. It is therefore a standard language designed by the same group ho designed MOF, UML, SysML and MDA in general. XPAnd is a language which I guess existed before the standard but it is now different from it.
If you start from scratch then start with Acceleo.

In my case, I use a custom meta-model (derived from UML2) with custom stereotypes and stereotypes properties). I tried both Acceleo and Xpand template languages. Indeed they are pretty similar in term of structure and capabilities.
However, I can see one big difference (which makes Xpand much better in this use case): you can use your custom stereotypes in your Xpand templates.
Xpand engine brilliantly chooses the "best matching template/rule" for every stereotype (taking into account inheritance between stereotypes as well).
Furthermore, it is very easy to obtain stereotype properties.
These two "features" make the templates very elegant, compact and readable.
For example:
«DEFINE myTemplate FOR MyUmlProfile::MyStereoType»
MyValue: «this.myStereotypeProperty» or simply: «myStereotypeProperty»
«ENDDEFINE»
In Acceleo, I found it clumsy to achieve the same (longer statements, more code) and my templates ended up lengthy and complex. The positive thing about Acceleo, however, was that it worked conveniently from IBM RSA (applied directly to RSA (emx) models). It has code highlighting and auto-complete working nicely.
Xpand only worked if I exported my RSA models to ".uml" (~XML) format. It doesn't offer code highlighting or auto-complete (or at least I didn't figure out how).
Considering all pros and cons, I still vote for Xpand (in my use case).

How to protect Java codes against decompiler? [closed]

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Closed 10 years ago.
As we know , there are a lot of java decompiler tools which can convert .class to .java file.
Therefore,we need to protect our .java files against decompiler. I know this is a big topic,and maybe there is no ending.
Usually, there are two ways : obfuscator and customized classloader.
Is there any mature solution or open source framework, which combined those two ways ?
Another aspect is related with exe4j, which package jars to exe file,seems like it can protect java codes , because what we can see is exe file instead of jars or class files. But indeed, when it runs, it decompose all jars files into temporary directories, that means it is easy to get class files for decompiler.
So any considerations for protecting java codes from the aspect of exe4j ?
Thanks for your comments and suggests.
Updating
Thanks everyone for your suggest or experience share. That is helpful to me.
To make a conclusion, I will give up any obfuscator or customized classloader with encryption things. Because finally Java codes can be disclosed before clever hackers.
I will remove some core codes during compiler time using tricks like "#ifdef" in C language. In Java, static and final boolean class variable can be used to do the same job.
Then the compilered class file will not contain need-protected java codes.

You can use an obfuscator, like ProGard or Ygard, but it is not too complex to decrypt strings and rename classes, fields and methods.
You can encrypt your classes with a private key, and use a custom classloader to decrypt your classes with a public key before loading into memory, but it is not too complex to modify the classloader to save onto a disc all the classes loaded.
You can try crash decompilers. JAD is one of the best decompilers but if you add corrupted entries in the constant pools, all products powered by JAD crash. However, some decompilers are still working.
The only way to protect your software, is to deploy it in a SaaS/PaaS.
But keep one's head: most people use a decompiler because they have a technical problem and the documentation is poor or nonexistent. Write a good documentation and use a solid EULA is the better solution.

You can't protect the class files from a decompiler and from malicious users. However the output of the decompiler may not be valid java.
The best method is to document your API (assuming this is available for your customers to use) and application very very well. And have your support personnel be able to resolve API and application issues. Then your customers will have no reason to want to use a decompiler to explore why things are not working correctly.

Software as a Service.

The only way that's particularly effective is to offer your program as a web service of some kind, so that the compiled code is never even available on an end-user machine.
The next most effective solution, which is one that is widely used in practice, is to make your program so terrible that no-one wants to use it or spend the time reverse engineering it in the first place. I suspect that when this happens it is typically accidental, however.

You can try open source project proguard

In fact, not only Java, silverlight and flash also have the same issue. Anyone who downloaded the package can decompress and then decompile to reverse engineer your code.
I agree with Saas will be the best solution, having the web service to handle all the underlying logic and provides data establishes a relatively secured & isolated layer to the end clients to consume data.

My advice is that if you are really serious about this, you should only release the demo software to people who have signed a legally binding non-disclosure agreement. And be prepared to go to court if they breach the agreement.
By all means, obfuscate your demo application, etc as well, but don't imagine that this will stop a determined hacker from discovering the "secret sauce" in your application. It is not possible to prevent this, in theory and in practice. Piracy is inevitable if you use the pay-for-license model of monetizing your software.
(Actually, it is theoretically possible, but only with a totally secured platform like TPM. And that ain't an option for you. Trust me.)

Everything is hackable. Just have a solid EULA and put the efforts in there instead of wasting them to hopeless attempts to protect the code.

What about encrypting your class files and using a customised classloader to load your class files ?

What are the differences between BDD frameworks for Java? [closed]

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Closed 9 years ago.
What are the pros and cons of each Behavior Driven Development (BDD) framework for Java?
I've found some of them here, for example.
Does it make sense to use a BDD framework if I already use a mocking library (e.g. Mockito)?

I've just finished comparing three BDD frameworks for Java. Obviously my findings have a fairly short use-by date.
Concordion
Very flexible
Very pretty report output
Nice plugin framework
Poorly documented. I had to read the source to figure it out (luckily its extremely good quality).
Fixtures seemed likely to end up tightly coupled to the html.
EasyB
Very shallow learning curve (even for non-Groovy Developers)
Extremely powerful DBUnit integration
Apparently no support for parameters (leads to either very vague stories or duplication between text and code (edit: actually there is but the documentation for it was very well hidden.)
Story and Code are very tightly coupled (same file)
Very basic report output
Couldn't get IntelliJ plugin to work
Inactive community (Maven plugin seems to have been broken for three months - not many code examples to draw on)
JBehave
Extremely powerful and flexible (eg reduction of boiler-plate through composition of stories as pre-requisites)
Extensive (if fragmented) documentation and examples
Extensive (if overwhelming) support for different frameworks and environments
Excellent separation of story files from code
Looks to have a pretty active community and much more examples and discussion of it on web.
Quite a steep learning curve (took me 3-4 times longer to figure out than Concordion/EasyB)
I didn't have the chance to try out Cuke4Duke of JDave as I would have liked, but will probably push for JBehave at this time.

"pros and cons" might be different things for different people. I usually have a look at
development activity, e.g. are new releases likely or is the last release 2 years old.
maturity, e.g. how long has it been around, are there tutorials and maybe even books available. (I don't read these books, it's just a sign of adoption.)
tool support, e.g. is there an Eclipse plugin, Ant support, etc
size of the dependencies, I don't like frameworks that come with everything of their own. e.g. I want to chose my mocking framework myself.
kind of license, this is important for me because of legal terms in the company I work for.
compatibility with related tools, e.g. does it use Gherkin language or not.
And from some frameworks I had a look at
Instinct bad: last activity Mar 2010, good: ASF license
JDave bad: comes with matchers and mocks, good: last activity Jan 2011, ASF license
easyb bad: last activity Oct 2010, not sure: it uses Groovy. This might be ok, but would be a problem for adoption in my case.
beanspec bad: only one version in 2007, this is dead
bdoc bad: last activity Jan 2010, not sure: it looks like going the other way, creating a report from the code.
spock bad: maybe a bit extreme, this is a complete testing framework, not only BDD, good: very active, very cool.
jbehave, the "mother" of all BDD in Java, bad: very powerful = complex, incompatible license (for me), comes with almost every test library and much more, good: based on RSpec and therefore compatible, eclipse plugins, maven integration, very active community
ginkgo4j, a BDD framework for Java also based on Ruby's RSpec but using Java lambda's (instead of annotations) to allow you to create highly contextual, highly readable tests. Simple. Very powerful. Open source Apache 2 license.
Concerning the mocks: You definitely need a mocking framework as well. The BDD frameworks just help you in writing the specs, but some tests will need mocks or stubs, esp. when you design top down (from overview to detail).

What's the best BDD framework to use with Java? Why? What are the pros and cons of each framework?
Here is an interesting link about Concordion vs. Cucumber and Java based Acceptance Testing
I've found couple of them here, but I'm not sure which one to choose.
Really, look at the one mentioned above.
Does it make sense to use a BDD framework if I already use a mocking library (e.g. Mockito)?
Short answer: yes, definitely. Actually, acceptance testing using a BDD framework and unit testing in isolation using mock objects are so different that I don't really get the question. Acceptance testing is black box testing, tests are used to verify that a business feature is working and are ideally written by business analyst. Unit tests in isolation using mocks is white box testing, tests are used to verify that a unit is working and are written by developers. Both are useful buty they have totally different purposes. In other words, using Mockito doesn't replace a BDD framework at all and the inverse is also true.

I originally did my BDD with plain jUnit but I've been looking at JDave lately because it's almost 1:1 to what I was doing with jUnit. It also runs on top of jUnit so it already works on Eclipse and is also easy to configure to work on continuous integration systems such as Hudson. Can't really compare it with others but my experiences with JDave have been good so far.
Oh and it's never a stupid idea to use mocks! They're not tied to TDD/BDD specifically, their purpose is to ease the burden of testing in general.

Wow, I see the topic is hot, lot of good answers...
Irony aside, I recently discovered BDD and found the concept interesting. Hey, it forces to write both tests... and specifications! As surprising as it might seem, the latter can be also missing in some projects... Or just lacking the precision that BDD forces to introduce.
The Behavior Driven Development article summarizes the concept and links to some good articles (like the one written by Andrew Glover). Moreover, to the topic of this thread, it gives a rather comprehensive (I suppose) listing of BDD frameworks, a good number of them being for Java.
It doesn't solve the problem of choosing the framework but at least it will ease the search...
Since BDD relies heavily on readability of test code, I suppose a good criterion of choice is to look at the quick tours/tutorial and see which one seems the more fitting your style.
Other criteria could be the fact a framework leverage tools you are familiar with (unit test, mocking), usage with IDE, and so on.

I tried Cucumber-JVM (previously developed as Cuke4Duke).
It uses Gherkin DSL for specification, stored as plain text.
It can be run as a JUnit test. So the only problem to start using it is to make business people or Product Manager read/write .features in Sources.
Results

My team have been using JBehave for some time. It uses plain text files to store specifications. Every step (Given, When, Then) is then executed by a certain method which can extract parameters from the step. Scenarios can be indented and well formatted which helps a lot if clients want to verify them.
There are some problems, too. We have switched to Java 6. Sometimes some scenario steps are ignored during execution. It may cause a lot of trouble figuring out where's the bug.

My team have used JBehave with success - we moved to it after using EasyB and found the plain text scenario files easier to deal with.

Java XML Binding [closed]

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Closed 9 years ago.
What are you using for binding XML to Java? JAXB, Castor, and XMLBeans are some of the available choices. The comparisons that I've seen are all three or four years old. I'm open to other suggestions. Marshalling / unmarshalling performance and ease of use are of particular interest.
Clarification: I'd like to see not just what framework you use, but your reasoning for using one over the others.

If you want to make an informed decision you need to be clear why you are translating between XML and java objects. The reason being that the different technologies in this space try to solve different problems. The different tools fall into two categories:
XML data binding - refers to the process of representing the information in an XML document as an object in computer memory. Typically, this means defining an XSD and generating a java source code equivalent. Interop between different languages is top priority (hence the use of XSD) - most typically for the implementation of SOAP-based web services.
XML serialisation - refers to writing out a graph of in memory objects to a stream, so that it can be reconstituted somewhere or sometime else. You write the java classes by hand; the xml representation is of secondary importance. Also, the need for performance is often greater and the need for interoperation with other languages such as .net is often lower.
For xml serialisation, Xstream is hard to beat. JAXB is the standard for XML binding.
In either case, if you are using J2EE you'll need to pay careful attention to classes retrieved from JPA since class proxies and persistence specific collection types can confuse binding / serialization tools.

JiBX. Previously I used Castor XML, but JiBX proved to be significantly better, particularly in terms of performance (a straight port of some application code from Castor XML to JiBX made it 9x faster). I also found the mapping format for JiBX to be more elegant than Castor's.
JiBX achieves its performance by using post-compilation bytecode manipulation rather than the reflection approach adopted by Castor. This has the advantage that it places fewer demands on the way that you write your mapped classes. There is no need for getters, setters and no-arg constructors just to satisfy the tools. Most of the time you can write the class without considering mapping issues and then map it without modifications.

If you have an XSD for the XML, and you don't need to bind the data to an existing set of classes, then I really like XMLBeans. Basically, it works like this:
Compile XSD
Use generated java classes to read/write documents conforming to this schema
Binding an XML document to the generated classes is as simple as:
EmployeesDocument empDoc = EmployeesDocument.Factory.parse(xmlFile);

We use xstream. Marshalling / unmarshalling is trivial. See their tutorial for examples.

Jibx is what is used around here. It is very fast, but the bindings can be a little tricky. However, it is especially useful if you have XML schemas describing your domain objects, as it really maps well to XSD (there's even a beta tool XSD2Jibx which can take XSDs and create stub domain classes and mappings, which you can then take and coax to fit your existing domain model).
It manipulates bytecode, so it must be run after the initial compilation of the Java .class files. You can use the Maven plugin for it, or just use it directly (the Eclipse plugin didn't seem to work for me).

I've used Jaxb with varying success. At the time (a couple of years back) the overall documentation was lackluster and the basic usage documentation (including where to download implementations) was difficult to find or varied.
The parser which wrote the Java classes was quite good with little discrepancy against the original XSD (though I think it had problems supporting abstract XML elements).
I haven't used it since, but I have an upcoming project which will require just such a framework and I will be interested to know how anyone else fairs with the above.

I used castor 7 years ago -- it worked fairly well. used DTDs. Not many choices at that time.
In current projects, I've used
1) JAXB -- standards based, Reference implementation available, command line and ant tools available. latest version - 2.1.8 needs java 5+.
2) XStream -- for Soap unmarshalling -- needs Java 5+. Is not as fast and standards compliant as JAXB latest.
BR,
~A

Related: XML serialization in Java?

XmlBeans is a good choice especially if you have 'broken' XSD/WSDL files.
Don mentioned
EmployeesDocument empDoc = EmployeesDocument.Factory.parse(xmlFile);
..but it can also take a Node, or a File, or just about any source.
No fighting with namespaces,
traverse to the object you want to unmarshall,
and Factory.parse it.
Wish I had found it 2 weeks ago.

We use Castor. It suits our needs fairly well.

I was wondering exactly the same question, and finally I found this performance tests made by IBM. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-databdopt2/. JiBX is my choice I guess, hehe.

Do you generate code? If so, what do you use and what do you generate? [closed]

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Closed 10 years ago.
I've used MyGeneration, and I love it for generating code that uses Data Access Applicaiton Blocks from Microsoft for my Data Access Layer, and keeping my database concepts in sync with the domain I am modeling. Although, it took a steeper than expected learning curve one weekend to make it productive.
I'm wondering what others are doing related to code generation.
http://www.mygenerationsoftware.com
http://www.codesmithtools.com/
Others?
Back in 2000, or so, the company I worked for used a product from Veritas Software (I believe it was) to model components and generate code that integrated components (dlls). I didn't get a lot of experience with it, but it seems that code generation has been the "holy grail" for a long time. Is it practical? How are others using it?
Thanks!

T4 is the CodeSmith killer for Microsoft!!!!
Go check it out. Microsoft doesn't want to destroy their partners so they don't advertise it, but it is a thing to be reckoned with and ITS FREE and comes installed in Visual Studio 2008.
www.olegsych.com
codeplex.com/t4toolbox
www.t4editor.net

I have used LLBLGen and nHibernate successfully to generate Entity and DAL layers.

We use Codesmith and have had great success with it. I am now constantly trying to find where we can implement templates to speed up mundane processes.

I've done work with CSLA and used codesmith to generate my code using the CSLA templates.
codesmithtools.com

If your database is your model, SubSonic has an excellent code generator that as of v2.1, no longer requires ActiveRecord (you can use the Repository Pattern instead). It's less flexible than others, but there are customizations that can be made in the stock templates.

I have used CodeSmith and MyGeneration, wasn't overly keen on either, felt somewhat terse to use, learning template languages etc.
SubSonic is what we sometimes use here to generate a Data Access Layer. Used in the right size projects, it is a fantastic time saving tool. clicky

I see code generation harmfull as well, but only if you use 3rd party tools like codesmith and mygeneration. I have 2 stored procedures that generate my domain objects and domain interfaces
Example
GenerateDomainInterface 'TableName'
Then I just copy and paste it into visual studio. Works pretty awesome for those tasks I hate to do.

Two framworks I use often.
Ragel
Something worth checking out is Ragel. It's used to generate code for state machines.
You just add some simple markup to your source code, then run a generator on
Ragel generates code for C, C++, Objective-C, D, Java and Ruby, and it's easy to mix it with your regular source.
Ragel even allow you to execute code on state transitions and such. It makes it easy to create file format and protocol parsers.
Some notable projects that user Ragel are, Mongrel, a great ruby web server. And Hpricot, a ruby based html-parser, sort of inspired by jQuery.
Another great feature of Ragel is how it can generate graphviz-based charts that visualize your state machines. Below is an example taken from Zed Shaw's article on ragel state charts.
(source: zedshaw.com)
XMLBeans
XMLBeans is a java-based xml-binding. It's got a great workflow and I use it often.
XMLBeans processen an xml-schema that describes your model, into a set of java-classes that represents that model. You can programmatically create models then serialise them to and from xml.

I have used CodeSmith. Was pretty helpful.

I love to use
SubSonic. Open source is the way to go with code generation I think because it is very easy to modify the templates and the core as they always tend to have bugs or one or two things you want to do that is not built in.

I've used code generation for swizzle functions in a vector math library. I used a custom PERL script for it. None of the FLOSS generators I looked at seemed well-suited to creating swizzle functions
I generally use C++ templates, rather than code generation.

I've primarily used LLBLGen Pro to generate code. It offers a variety of patterns to use for generation and you can supply your own patters, just like CodeSmith. The customer support has been excellent.
Essentially, I generate my business objects and DAL using LLBLGen and keep them up to date. The code templates have sections where you can add your own logic that won't be wiped out during regeneration. It's definitely worth taking a look.

We custom build our code generation using linq and XML literals (VB).
We haven't found a way to break the solutions into templates yet; however, those two technologies make this task so trivial, I don't think we will.

I'd consider code generation harmful as it bloats the codebase without adding new logic or insight. Ideally one should raise the level of abstraction, use data files, templates or macros etc. to avoid generating large amounts of boiler plate code. It helps you get things done quickly but can hurt maintainability in the long run.
If your chosen programming language becomes much less painful by generating it from some template language, that seems indicate you'd save even more time by doing the higher level work in another, perhaps more dynamic language. YMMV.

LLBLGen Pro is an excellent tool which allows you to write a database agnostic solution. It's really quick to pick up the basic features. Advanced features aren't much more challenging. I highly recommend you check it out.

I worked for four years as the main developer in a web agency, as I wrote from ground-up my first two or three websites, I soon realized that it was going to be a very boring task to do it all the times. So I started writing my own web site generator engine.
My starting point was this site http://www.codegeneration.net/. I took one of their examples for a simple crud generation and extended to the level that i was generating entire sites with it.
I used xml for the definition of various parts of the website (pages, datalists, joins, tables, form management). The generated web sites were completely detached from the generator, so the generated website could also be modified by hand.
Here is their article http://www.codegeneration.net/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=19.

I've done several one-off's of code generation using Castor to create Java source code based on XSD's. The latest use was to create Java classes for an Open Travel Association implementation. The OTA Schema is pretty hairy and would have been a bear to do by hand. Castor did a pretty good job given the complexity of the schema.

Python.
I have used MyGeneration which uses C# to write your code templates. However, I started using Python and I found that I can write code that generates other code faster in that language than I would if written in C#. Subsequently, I have used Python to code gen C#, TSQL, and VB.
Generally, code that generates other code tends to be harder to follow by its very nature. Python's cleaner syntax helps tremendously by making it more readable and more maintainable than the equivalent in C#.

codesmith for .net

I wrote a utility where you specify a table and it generates an Oracle trigger which records all changes to that table. Makes logging really simple.
There's another one I wrote that generates a Delphi class that models any database table you give it, but I consider it a code smell to do that, so I rarely use it.

At the company we've written our own to generate most of our entity/dalc/business classes and the related stored procedures as it took only a little time and we had some special requirements. Although I'm sure we could've achieved the same thing using an existing generator, it was a fun little project to work on.
Codesmith's been recommended by many people and it does seem to be a good one. Personally all I need from a code generator is to make it easy to amend templates.

I use the hibernate tools in myEclipse to generate domain models and DAO code from my data model. It seems to work pretty well (there are some issues if you write custom methods in your DAO's, these seem to get lost on over-writes), but generally it seems to work pretty well- especially in conjunction with Spring.

SubSonic is great!! The query capability is easy to grasp, and the stored procedure implementation is truly awesome. I could go on and on. It makes you productive instantly.

I mainly code in C# and when i need code generation I do it in XLST when the source could be simply converted to XML or a ruby script when it's more complex.
If the code generation part need frequent modifications by more than a few developers CodeSmith works pretty well (And is easier to learn than XSLT or ruby by new developers).

Outsystems' Agile Platform can be used to generate open source, well documented C# and Java applications. Because it has also several features related to deploying, managing and changing, most people end up using it not just to generate the code but actually to manage the full life-cycle of web applications.

For some time, I've used a home-grown script/template language for code generation. (I've used that languge mostly for no other reason than to find use for my little pet project)
Recently, I've created some SQL*PLUS scripts to create database access code (no Hibernate for us...)

MyGeneration all the way!
MyGeneration is an extremely flexible template based code generator written in Microsoft.NET. MyGeneration is great at generating code for ORM architectures. The meta-data from your database is made available to the templates through the MyMeta API.