XML rule based source code generator for UML CASE tool

Abstract

Generating program source code based on a design model using a CASE tool is an important area in forward engineering. The generation of code from a design model is valuable in making developers maintain consistency between a model and its implementation and abating the routine work of writing skeleton source codes. However, implementing code generation with a CASE tool is not simple due to the metadata format, language, and policies of adopting a modeler's option. Because of the continuous introduction of development environments like EJB and COM, the extensibility of CASE tools becomes the principal factor for comparison. We believe that its feasible to generate source code in various languages based on a generation rule. In this paper, we propose an XML based code generation rule and code generator. The proposed rule provides higher level constructs to the developer for describing code generation, and by making the code generator independent of repository format, the increased applicability of the code generator is shown.