This document provides definitions for the technical terms and concepts used in
Sirius, and in particular in the rest of this documentation.
For concepts
which concern end-users, it assumes some basic knowledge of Eclipse terminology. If
you are not familiar with it, please refer to the Eclipse documentation itself. For
concepts targeted to specifier (and developers), it also assumes knowledge of EMF
and relegated technologies (including Java for developers). Again, refer to the
documentation of these frameworks or tools as needed.
- Dialect
- A kind of representation supported by Sirius. Out of the box, Sirius
supports three dialects: diagrams, tables, and trees. Sequence diagrams and
cross-tables, which are special kinds of diagrams (resp. tables) can also be though
of as dialects, although technically they are not.
- Modeling Project
- A special kind of project in your workspace which makes it easy to manipulate
representation files and semantic models in a consistent way.
- Representation
- A particular diagram, table, or tree which you created on your semantic model. It
is simply a more general term than «diagram» which is also usable for
other dialects.
- Representation File
- A file in which Sirius stores all informations related to which representations you created,
what appears on them, the positions and colors of the elements, etc. This files have a
.aird extension (typically representations.aird).
Representation files reference the semantic model(s) they contain representations
for, but you semantic models are kept unaware (and unpolluted) of any
Sirius-specific data.
- Resource
- A generic term for a file (in your workspace or inside a plug-in) which contains a
model. The file extension (e.g.
.uml) indicates what kind of semantic
model it contains.
- Semantic Model
- The model (or models) which contains your business data. It can be stored in one
of several resources (files) which can reference each other. The type of semantic
model can be different for each user. It can be based on a standard (for
example
.uml files for UML models) or based on a Domain Specific Model
(sometimes called Domain Specific Language) which was specially
created for your needs.
- Viewpoint
- A set of consistent representation descriptions which provide a specific point of
view on some kind of semantic model. For example we could have a UML Structural
viewpoint, which describes the sub-set of all the standard UML
diagrams which deal only with structural aspects of UML models (as opposed to
behavioral or requirements aspects). Viewpoints are defined in
Viewpoint Specification Models and packaged as Eclipse plug-ins. Once you install such a
plug-in, the viewpoints it defines will be available to you (with all the representations
they define) on all compatible semantic models.
- VSM
- See Viewpoint Specification Model.
- Viewpoint Specification Model
- The model, stored in resources with the
.odesign extension, in which an architect
defines and configures viewpoints and their associated representations.
- VSP
- See Viewpoint Specification Project.
- Viewpoint Specification Project
- An Eclipse plug-in project which contains a VSM and registers it using the
proper extension point so that it can be deployed correctly.