Merlin

Merlin is an innovative software modeling tool that belongs to a new generation of agile development software and follows the principle that "Developing is not struggling". Built on top of the Eclipse platform, and of the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF), thus easily integrated into developers' workspaces, Merlin is based on two main concepts that are code generation and model transformation.

Unlike many other tools, Merlin is designed right from the start as an assistant that relieves developers from the pain of performing unpleasant but mandatory tasks. This is achieved by providing a subtle mix of means to transform complex models into precise, simple, effective and dedicated artifacts, and means to produce code from these effective models.

Pragmatic and simple, it is the ideal supplement for teams that have adopted iterative modeling processes to their working practices. The tool is divided in two parts:

• Merlin Core, which provides advanced & customizable code generation and model transformation authoring capabilities.
• Merlin Components, which comprises a collection of ready-to-use model transformation & code generation assets, targeted at the most common needs of software development within Eclipse.

Code Generation.

Many Eclipse developers already benefit from the simplicity and from the robustness of the default java code generation provided by EMF. Merlin brings more flexibility to this standard generation capability. The tool makes use of a Java JET Projects to dynamically map templates to models and generate arbitrary text files and java code.

Click on any image to see some screenshots.

Model transformation.

One of the major trends in nowadays software development and modeling practices is the quest for model transformation. Merlin makes use of type mappings and mapping rules to define simple yet efficient model transformations. QVT technology is also targeted for defining more advanced transformations..

Click on any image to see some screenshots.

Click on the link to have an overview of Merlin's features.

Download Merlin on source forge site.