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Roundtrip Engineering

 RTE BPF Roundtrip Engineering (RTE) New in v0.4!

We are pleased to introduce Roundtrip Engineering with Eclipse as an external IDE. This feature is available in BPF v0.4 (Download Now!)

What is RTE?
 
Round-trip Engineering is a complex, and final, culmination stage in the SDLC, in which the tool (BPF, in this case) facilitates the synchronization of the design model with the underlying source code. Many other toolkits offer [UML] modeling features, and in-built code editors, but very few offer ‘external’ IDE-integration. RTE allows developers to keep the design in synch with their code-changes, while it allows designers to keep their source code updated as per changes/updates in the design. It should be appreciated, that this is a complex scenario, and also needs discipline, as well as a much more detailed understanding of Model-driven design (MDD/MDA) to exploit the potential.

 

Why Eclipse as an IDE?
 
BPF is built completely on the Eclipse Platform, and for Java development, Eclipse is amongst the leading IDE’s. As a platform, Eclipse is open, and open source, thus it was a natural choice for us. The Eclipse IDE Platform makes it easy to know how the IDE works (or can be modified or extended), and this is what we have used.
 
 
What one can do with RTE?
 
RTE is useful for forward-engineering as well as reverse engineering. At times, you may have to reverse engineer source code to understand it better from a design perspective. RTE can be useful in both these scenarios, to keep design and code in synch. BPF enables this through a quick and simplified integration with your Eclipse IDE, so you do not have to leave BPF or your development context!  There are benefits to be derived, based on the principles of MDA/MDD, to improve quality and/or efficiencies in the process of developing software. MDD/MDA really brings the meaning to ‘software engineering’ and RTE can be a key enabler to overcome the challenge of keeping design-models and source code in synch.

 

More information

Download BPF v0.4.

Please check the User Guide in the Document Library for more information on using RTE.

 

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