Adding flexibility to a process or technology often comes with a price. This holds true in the case of the amendments made to Java EE platform to upgrade to version 5. Java EE 5 allows Enterprise Java Bean (EJB) developers the ability to configure EJBs via Java 5 annotations, through XML deployment descriptors, or through a combination of both. While this adds flexibility to the EJB configuration process, it also comes with the price of an EJB project's stakeholder not being able to ascertain the current configuration of an EJB project until runtime, due to the multiple sources of configuration and the complex overriding rules. Furthermore, to detect errors in configuration or perform antipattern instance detection it is clearly beneficial to have a representation of an EJB project that accurately represents the current configuration of the system. This thesis first presents an EJB Framework Specific Modeling Language (FSML) that formalizes the EJB domain's specific components in the form of a cardinality-based feature model. By having such a model and using and extending the existing FSML infrastructure, one retrieves a Framework Specific Model (FSM) through reverse engineering that represents all the information from the various sources of EJB configuration. By analyzing this FSM, we can create another model that represents the resolved configuration of an EJB project. We employ model filtration to highlight specific sources of configuration. We then use open-source and custom EJB projects to evaluate the EJB FSML and the resolved model. Models admit antipattern instance detection. This thesis presents two methods for running antipattern instance detection on an EJB project using existing EJB antipatterns in literature: 1) queries in Java that execute against the resolved configuration model; and 2) queries written in .QL, an object-oriented query language, against the EJB project's source code. We compare these two techniques qualitatively and propose a new approach based on this comparison that entails modeling the antipatterns and their symptoms within an FSML model declaratively.

Adding flexibility to a process or technology often comes with a price. This holds true in the case of the amendments made to Java EE platform to upgrade to version 5. Java EE 5 allows Enterprise Java Bean (EJB) developers the ability to configure EJBs via Java 5 annotations, through XML deployment descriptors, or through a combination of both. While this adds flexibility to the EJB configuration process, it also comes with the price of an EJB project's stakeholder not being able to ascertain the current configuration of an EJB project until runtime, due to the multiple sources of configuration and the complex overriding rules. Furthermore, to detect errors in configuration or perform antipattern instance detection it is clearly beneficial to have a representation of an EJB project that accurately represents the current configuration of the system. This thesis first presents an EJB Framework Specific Modeling Language (FSML) that formalizes the EJB domain's specific components in the form of a cardinality-based feature model. By having such a model and using and extending the existing FSML infrastructure, one retrieves a Framework Specific Model (FSM) through reverse engineering that represents all the information from the various sources of EJB configuration. By analyzing this FSM, we can create another model that represents the resolved configuration of an EJB project. We employ model filtration to highlight specific sources of configuration. We then use open-source and custom EJB projects to evaluate the EJB FSML and the resolved model. Models admit antipattern instance detection. This thesis presents two methods for running antipattern instance detection on an EJB project using existing EJB antipatterns in literature: 1) queries in Java that execute against the resolved configuration model; and 2) queries written in .QL, an object-oriented query language, against the EJB project's source code. We compare these two techniques qualitatively and propose a new approach based on this comparison that entails modeling the antipatterns and their symptoms within an FSML model declaratively.

Java 2 Enterprise Edition is a portable, robust, scalable and secure platform for enterprise software development based on Java technologies, and embraces open standards through the Java Community Process (JCP). J2EE development is not very productive because of the complexity of the platform and the lack of good tool support. Object-Oriented Frame- works are a reliable design and code reuse approach. Many frameworks have emerged since J2EE’s release to ease development. Struts has become the de-facto standard, while JavaServer Faces (JSF) is a new framework, which has been included in the J2EE spec- ification and hence standardized. Both Struts and JSF frameworks are based on Model- View-Controller design pattern. JSF takes a similar approach to Struts for the controller component, but adds to it by providing user interface components with server-side state for the view component. This work deals with the problem of migrating an application based on the Struts frame- work to the new JSF framework. The software migration task is divided into view and con- troller migration. Controller migration is semi-automated using Antkiewicz’s Framework- Specific Modeling Languages (FSML) approach. Guidelines are provided for view migra- tion, which boils down to the problem of componentization. JSF and Struts frameworks can also be used together where JSF supports the view component while Struts supports the controller component. Merits and demerits of this approach are also discussed.

Java 2 Enterprise Edition is a portable, robust, scalable and secure platform for enterprise software development based on Java technologies, and embraces open standards through the Java Community Process (JCP). J2EE development is not very productive because of the complexity of the platform and the lack of good tool support. Object-Oriented Frame- works are a reliable design and code reuse approach. Many frameworks have emerged since J2EE’s release to ease development. Struts has become the de-facto standard, while JavaServer Faces (JSF) is a new framework, which has been included in the J2EE spec- ification and hence standardized. Both Struts and JSF frameworks are based on Model- View-Controller design pattern. JSF takes a similar approach to Struts for the controller component, but adds to it by providing user interface components with server-side state for the view component. This work deals with the problem of migrating an application based on the Struts frame- work to the new JSF framework. The software migration task is divided into view and con- troller migration. Controller migration is semi-automated using Antkiewicz’s Framework- Specific Modeling Languages (FSML) approach. Guidelines are provided for view migra- tion, which boils down to the problem of componentization. JSF and Struts frameworks can also be used together where JSF supports the view component while Struts supports the controller component. Merits and demerits of this approach are also discussed.

<p>Object-oriented frameworks are currently widely used in software application development. Unfortunately, they are known to be generally difficult to use because of the difficulty in understanding the concepts and constraints in different frameworks. With the formalization of framework concepts and constraints in domain-specific modeling languages called framework-specific modeling languages (FSMLs), previous works have shown that round-trip engineering between models of applications using frameworks and the application code is possible to aid framework application development.</p> <p>Framework-specific modeling languages only capture, however, framework concepts and constraints and hence, lack the expressiveness of general-purpose modeling languages. For this reason, the complete code for an entire framework application cannot be generated from the model in the model editor using round-trip engineering, and the user would need to switch to the code editor to program the application logic code. Also, since models are only abstractions of code, implementation details in code may be missing in models. Although default implementation details can be used when generating code from a model, the generated code might require further customization by the user, which would also require switching to the code editor.</p> <p>To reduce the need for the user to switch between the model editor and the code editor and to reduce the need to customize the generated code, this thesis presents a model-guided approach to providing code assistance for framework application development directly in the code editor, where additional implementation details can also be obtained. An approach to building a context-sensitive code assistant that aids the user in the implementation of framework concepts with the consideration of framework constraints is described. A prototype has further been implemented and applied on two widely popular frameworks. The evaluation in this thesis analyzes and characterizes framework concepts and shows that the framework-based code assistant can reduce the need to customize the generated code in the code editor when compared to code generation from the model editor.</p>

<p>Object-oriented frameworks are currently widely used in software application development. Unfortunately, they are known to be generally difficult to use because of the difficulty in understanding the concepts and constraints in different frameworks. With the formalization of framework concepts and constraints in domain-specific modeling languages called framework-specific modeling languages (FSMLs), previous works have shown that round-trip engineering between models of applications using frameworks and the application code is possible to aid framework application development.</p> <p>Framework-specific modeling languages only capture, however, framework concepts and constraints and hence, lack the expressiveness of general-purpose modeling languages. For this reason, the complete code for an entire framework application cannot be generated from the model in the model editor using round-trip engineering, and the user would need to switch to the code editor to program the application logic code. Also, since models are only abstractions of code, implementation details in code may be missing in models. Although default implementation details can be used when generating code from a model, the generated code might require further customization by the user, which would also require switching to the code editor.</p> <p>To reduce the need for the user to switch between the model editor and the code editor and to reduce the need to customize the generated code, this thesis presents a model-guided approach to providing code assistance for framework application development directly in the code editor, where additional implementation details can also be obtained. An approach to building a context-sensitive code assistant that aids the user in the implementation of framework concepts with the consideration of framework constraints is described. A prototype has further been implemented and applied on two widely popular frameworks. The evaluation in this thesis analyzes and characterizes framework concepts and shows that the framework-based code assistant can reduce the need to customize the generated code in the code editor when compared to code generation from the model editor.</p>