Re: ANN: ASIS2XML 20041024a

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

Ian Sharpe <igs.net.news@ntlworld.com> writes:

> A transformation to XMI would certainly be interesting, but I think
> that in practice such a thing would be specific to both the UML tool
> and the intended use. For example it wouldn't allow ColdFrame
> round-tripping 8-).

I tend to agree; see remarks above.

> What kinds of use did you have in mind (both ASIS2XML itself and an
> XMI-format representation)?

The particular use which drove this was working out how a data
structure appears "on the wire" when streamed. Default streams are a
great choice when you don't need to know the representation; when you
do, it gets more traumatic.

I hope people round here won't be too upset if I say that ASIS is a
fantastic idea, but the Ada expression of it is _not_ going lead to
rapid tool development. How long would it take to set up something to
find all the record definitions and process them sorted by type name?
The XSLT for that (with ASIS2XML's "schema", where I've just converted
the enumeration literals by lowercasing them and removing any leading
a_ or an_) is

  <xsl:apply-templates select="//record_definition">
    <xsl:sort select="../../defining_identifier"/>
  </xsl:apply-templates>

-- 
Simon Wright                               100% Ada, no bugs.