[cosmic-users] Usage questions on IDL generator

[Krishnakumar B]

Hi Bala,

On Mon, 12 Sep 2005 00:27:57 -0500, Balachandran Natarajan wrote:
> Hi
>
> CoSMIC VERSION: 0.4.5
>

[...]

>     SYNOPSIS:
>
>         Usage question in IDL Generator
>
>     DESCRIPTION:
>
> (1) How do I trigger forward declarations with generated IDLs? For
>     example, I am looking for something like this
>
>         interface bar;
>
>         interface foo 
>         {
>           bar bar_factory ();
>         };
>
>     in a file called foo.idl. When I specify the return type bar in a
>     different IDL (bar.idl) and specify the reference of bar in the
>     return type of bar_factory, the generated IDL takes this form 
>
>     #include "bar.idl"
>
>         interface foo 
>         {
>           bar bar_factory ();
>         };
>
>     which is not something I need. Can someone please point to the
>     right clicks to achieve this?

I don't think it's possible to do this right now.  I will let Jeff answer
this once he gets back from Germany.  

> (2) How do I specify local policies? For example a policy like this
>
>     local interface MyPOlicy : CORBA::Policy
>     {};
>
>     through PICML/IDLML?

If you meant "How do I specify local interfaces?", you can do it by setting
the local attribute on the interface to "Yes".  But if you are referring to
the problem with error in importing, it is because tao_picml.exe recognizes
the type CORBA::Policy as a built-in type, but erroneously generates a
dangling reference to the built-in type.  The other day we had the same
problem with an IDL file which was actually an IDL 2 equivalent mapping of
an IDL 3 file.  I think that this is because the built-in types of CORBA
don't find a representation in the model.  I believe this is a limitation
that needs to be addressed.

> (3) How do I add documentation in the model which can be spit out as
>     doxygen or javadoc style documentation in the generated  IDL?

Currently there is no support for this.  But this should be straightforward
to add.

> (4) How do I constraint check the model for documentation?

I am not sure I understand the problem.  Do you want to check the
constraints, or do you want to find if there is any documentation
associated with the model.

> (5) How do I create an XMI file or a UML model from the model we
>     create for IDL generation?

Currently not possible.  I am not sure this capability is even on the
table.

> (6) Is there a way to plug in an activity digram along with the IDL
>     model? Looks like this may be an useful feature if someone wants
>     to understand the interaction model between objects represented by
>     the IDLML.

Yes, I know, but there is a limit to what one can do with icons :-)
Seriously, I am interested in adding such a capability.  I will let you
know once I make some progress.

> Any help would be much appreciated. If the above are all in the works,
> please let me know when will they be available?

Please note that the IDL exporter is not as robust as the importer.  For
example, if you have methods with more than one arguments, you might find
that the order of the arguments change from one run to another run of the
exporter.  There were also some issues with generating unsigned versions of
IDL basic types.

-kitty.
 
-- 
Krishnakumar B <kitty at dre dot vanderbilt dot edu>
Institute for Software Integrated Systems, Dept. of EECS, Vanderbilt University