Section: Software and Platforms

MoDisco (Model Discovery)

URL: http://www.eclipse.org/MoDisco/

MoDisco is an open source Eclipse project that provides a generic and extensible framework dedicated to the elaboration of Model Driven Reverse Engineering (MDRE) solutions. Gathering contributions from both academics and industrials, the goal of the project is to federate common efforts in the model-based transformation of legacy software systems implemented using different technologies (e.g. Java, COBOL, C). The first principle is to discover models out of legacy artifacts, representing appropriately all the relevant information, to be then used as part of reverse engineering processes for software understanding, evolution or modernization. Targeted scenarios include software (technical or architectural) migration of large legacy systems, but also retro-documentation, refactoring, quality assurance, etc. Within this context, MoDisco has collaborations with the OMG Architecture Driven Modernization (ADM) Task Force, for which the project provides several reference implementations of its standards: Knowledge Discovery Metamodel (KDM), Software Measurement Metamodel (SMM) and Abstract Syntax Tree Metamodel (ASTM).

The MoDisco framework is composed of a set of Eclipse plugins, and relies on the de-facto standard Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) for model handling. Thanks to its modular architecture, it allows completely covering the three steps of a standard MDRE approach: 1) Discovery (i.e. extracting a complete model of the source code), 2) Understanding (i.e. browsing and providing views on this model for a given purpose) and 3) Transformation (evolving the model towards a new technology, architecture, etc). More specifically, as part of its Infrastructure layer, MoDisco offers the set of generic (i.e.; legacy technology-independent) reusable components really useful to build the core of MDRE solutions: Discovery Manager and Workflow for MDRE task orchestration, Model Browser for advanced navigation in complex models, model extension and customization capabilities for understanding (e.g. views definition), etc. As part of its Technologies layer, it provides an advanced support for the Java, JEE and XML technologies, including complete metamodels, corresponding model discoverers, transformations, code generators, customizations, query libraries, etc.

MoDisco (or some of its components) is being used by different partners including other academics, industrials (e.g. Sodifrance on several of their real modernization projects for their customers) or Eclipse projects (e.g. Eclipse-MDT Papyrus as developed by CEA). Moreover, the Eclipse-EMFT EMF Facet project has been initiated as a MoDisco spin-off, in order to externalize some features which are not actually specific to reverse engineering problems and thus may be reused in many different contexts (cf. corresponding EMF Facet section).

The initiative continues to be developed within the context of the European FP7-ICT project named ARTIST (http://www.artist-project.eu/ ), and also to a lower extent within the context of the French FUI 13 project named TEAP.