Eclipse extensibility

The Rational® UML modeling products themselves are built on the extensibility architecture provided by Eclipse, and this architecture is also available to you.

Plug-ins and the extension points that they provide are foundational to Eclipse extensibility. In fact, Eclipse is made up of a set of plug-ins. A plug-in is coded in Java™ and resides in a plugins directory. Each plug-in includes a manifest file that declares the extension points it provides to other plug-ins and the extension points it is making use of from other plug-ins. The Plug-in Development Environment (PDE), which is part of the Eclipse Software Development Kit (SDK), provides a set of tools to assist in all stages of plug-in development.

The Java development tooling (JDT) provided by Eclipse includes a Java IDE that can be used to add Java-specific behavior to the Eclipse platform and create plug-ins that interact with Java programs or resources.

An Eclipse component that is more closely related to modeling is the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF). Tools and applications built on this framework can generate efficient, customizable Java code from models. Within EMF, models are defined using XML Metadata Interchange (XMI). This standard file format eases model exchange between tools and the manipulation of related data.

For model access at the appropriate level of abstraction, and in step with the Unified Modeling Language 2.0 specification, use the UML 2.0 APIs. These APIs provide an EMF-based implementation of the UML 2.0 metamodel.

Related information

PDE Concepts

PDE API Reference

JDT Programmer's Guide

JDT API Reference

EMF Framework Overview

EMF API Javadoc

UML 2.0 API Javadoc

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