Diagrams Editors Specification Using Reusable Components

International audienceModel Driven Engineering (MDE) encourages the use of graphical modeling tools, which facilitate the development process from modeling to coding. Such tools can be designed using the MDE approach into metamodeling environments called metaCASE tools. It turned out that the implementation of such tools is made by technologies which need as much effort as resources for modest results, requiring in most cases additional programming efforts for their adaptation. Some of these technologies are suffering from weaknesses especially in terms of reusability. In this context, this paper proposes an evaluation for modeling editors. It discusses the current state of the art, compares what was done in every tool that we evaluate; according to relevant criteria; and propose "MID": a set of metamodels supporting the easy specification of modeling editors by means of reusable components

Cholecystokinin and Somatostatin Negatively Affect Growth of the Somatostatin-RIN-14B Cells

With the exclusive presence of the pancreatic CCK-2 receptors on the pancreatic delta cells of six different species, this study was undertaken to determine the role of cholecystokinin and gastrin on growth of these somatostatin (SS) cells. For this study, the SS-RIN-14B cells were used in culture and their growth was evaluated by cell counting. Results. To our surprise, we established by Western blot that these RIN cells possess the two CCK receptor subtypes, CCK-1 and CCK-2. Occupation of the CCK-1 receptors by caerulein, a CCK analog, led to inhibition of cell proliferation, an effect prevented by a specific CCK-1 receptor antagonist. Occupation of the CCK-2 receptors by the gastrin agonist pentagastrin had no effect on cell growth. Proliferation was not affected by SS released from these cells but was inhibited by exogenous SS. Conclusions. Growth of the SS-RIN-14B cells can be negatively affected by occupation of their CCK-1 receptors and by exogenous somatostatin

Improving Semantic Transparency of Committee-Designed Languages through Crowd-sourcing

International audienceCommittee-designed languages such as those of the OMG consor-tium are widely used in both industry and academia. These lan-guages seem to be used increasingly by users with no technical background for the visualization, documentation and specification of workflows, data and software systems. However, according to several studies on these languages, the used visual notations do not seem to convey any particular semantics and the recognition of such notations is not perceptually immediate. This lack of se-mantic transparency increases the cognitive load to differentiate concepts from each other and slows down recognition and learning of the language constructs. This paper proposes a process, which leverages the crowd-sourcing to improve the semantic transparency of such languages. We believe that involving end-users in the de-sign process of the languages visual notations should increase the expressiveness of these languages and then their acceptance for a wide range of novice-users

A Component-Based Approach for Specifying Reusable Visual Languages

International audienceModel-Driven Engineering (MDE) encourages the use of graphical modeling tools, which facilitate the development process from modeling to coding. Such tools can be designed using the MDE approach into metamodeling environments called metaCASE tools. It turned out that current metaCASE tools still require, in most cases, manual programming to build full tool support for the modeling language, especially for users' native methodologies and representational elements and suffer from gaps in terms of reusability. In this context, we propose MID, a set of metamodels supporting the specification of modeling editors by means of reusable components and explain how representational metamodeling is carried out with it

Specifez vos éditeurs de diagrammes à l'aide de composants réutilisables

National audienceL'Ingénierie Dirigée par les Modèles (IDM) favorise l'utilisation des outils de modélisation graphique dans toutes les étapes du processus de développement logiciel. Ces outils peuvent eux-mêmes, être conçus en utilisant une approche basée sur les modèles dans des environnements appelés outils MetaCase (Meta-Computer-Aided Software Engineering) qui nécessitent, généralement, des efforts supplémentaires de programmation pour leur adaptation, afin d'obtenir des outils de modélisation complets pour les langages spécifiques (DSML). De plus, ces outils ont souvent des lacunes en termes de réutilisabilité. Dans ce contexte, nous proposons MID, un ensemble de méta-modèles qui propose la spécification rapide des éditeurs de modélisation à partir de composants graphiques réutilisables. Nous examinons par la suite, les environnements de modélisation générés à partir de ces méta-modèles

A Component-Based Approach for Specifying DSML's Concrete Syntax

International audienceModel-Driven Engineering (MDE) encourages the use of graphical modeling tools, which facilitate the development process from modeling to coding. Such tools can be designed using the MDE approach into meta-modeling environments called metaCASE tools. It turned out that current metaCASE tools still require, in most cases, manual programming to build full tool support for the modeling language, especially for users' native methodologies and representational elements and propose limited possibilities in terms of reusability. In this context, we propose MID, a set of meta-models supporting the easy speci cation of modeling editors by means of reusable components and explain how representational meta-modeling is carried out with it

MID: A MetaCASE Tool For A Better Reuse Of Visual Notations

International audienceModeling tools facilitate the development process from modeling to coding. Such tools can be designed using a Model-Driven approach into metamodeling environments called metaCASE tools. It turned out that current metaCASE tools still require, in most cases, manual programming to build full tool support for the modeling language. First of all, we want to specify, using models, diagrams editors with a high graphical expressiveness without any need for manual intervention to perform this task. The second axis is dedicated to this specification reuse in other contexts of use. The redundancy of diagrams editors specification raises the problem of inconsistency during the evolution or the update of this specification. We propose then MID, a tool based on a set of meta-models supporting the easy specification of modeling editors with reusable components

Improving Semantic Transparency of Committee-Designed Languages through Crowd-sourcing

International audienceCommittee-designed languages such as those of the OMG consor-tium are widely used in both industry and academia. These lan-guages seem to be used increasingly by users with no technical background for the visualization, documentation and specification of workflows, data and software systems. However, according to several studies on these languages, the used visual notations do not seem to convey any particular semantics and the recognition of such notations is not perceptually immediate. This lack of se-mantic transparency increases the cognitive load to differentiate concepts from each other and slows down recognition and learning of the language constructs. This paper proposes a process, which leverages the crowd-sourcing to improve the semantic transparency of such languages. We believe that involving end-users in the de-sign process of the languages visual notations should increase the expressiveness of these languages and then their acceptance for a wide range of novice-users

Identification and characterization of a triacylglycerol lipase in Arabidopsis homologous to mammalian acid lipases

AbstractTriacylglycerol (TAG) lipases have been thoroughly characterized in mammals and microorganisms. By contrast, very little is known on plant TAG lipases. An Arabidopsis cDNA called AtLip1 (At2g15230), which exhibits strong homology to lysosomal acid lipase, was found to drive the synthesis of an active TAG lipase when expressed in the baculovirus system. The lipase had a maximal activity at pH 6 and the specific activity was estimated to be about 45μmolmin−1mg−1 protein using triolein as a substrate. Knock-out mutant analysis showed no phenotype during germination indicating that this enzyme is fully dispensable for TAG storage breakdown during germination. Northern blot analyses indicated that the transcript is present in all tissues tested

An evaluation of the intuitiveness of the PGA modeling language notation

The Process-Goal Alignment (PGA) modeling method is a domain-specific modeling language that aims to achieve strategic fit of the business strategy with the internal infrastructure and processes. To ensure the acceptance and correct understanding of PGA models by business-oriented end-users, an intuitively understandable notation is of paramount importance. However, the current PGA notation was not formally tested up to now. In the paper at hand, we apply an evaluation technique for testing the intuitiveness of domain-specific modeling languages to bridge that research gap. Based on an analysis of the tasks, we propose improvements to six elements of the initial PGA notation. Our research contributes a comprehensive description of the empirical modeling language evaluation, which enables the reproducibility of the evaluation procedure by the conceptual modeling community