DOORS Access Framework Overview

Developed by TU Berlin ASET: Florian Wiesweg and Jonas Winkler (2019)

The DOORS Access Framework (DAF) provides simple access to existing IBM DOORS databases and simple editing and snapshotting capabilites. In addition, it is extensible with plugins to allow more complex calculations on the data (i.e. NLP, ML, etc.). The project is split into three components:

• dafcore: The central database access and management library. Can be used to develop one's own GUI, or CLI applications.
• dafgui: An extensible JavaFX-based GUI developed on top of dafcore.
• dafplugin: An example plugin showing how to extend dafgui.

dafcore

dafcore revolves around a domain model described in eCore/EMF. The various database access classes (defined in de.jpwinkler.daf.db) export an object tree that must conform to the interfaces defined by this model, either by implementing it on their own or using the one automatically generated from the model. The following database access classes are available:

• DoorsApplicationDatabaseInterface (based on de.jpwinkler.daf.bridge): Provides read-only access to a locally installed DOORS application.
• FolderDatabaseInterface: Provides read/write access to a local directory structure containing *.csv and *.mmd files.
• RawFileDatabaseInterface: Provides read/write access to a single module in *.csv/*.mmd format.
• XmiDatabaseInterface: Provides read/write access to an XMI serialisation of the eCore model.

Based on these object graphs, two filter languages have been implemented (in de.jpwinkler.daf.filter.*) for objects and folders/modules.

dafgui

This is a straightforward UI to explore and analyse DOORS datasets. Just try it out ;) It can be extended by plugins, such as the example plugin provided in the dafplugin project. These plugins either operate globally on the application or locally on a given view of a databases.

Global plugins

Must implement de.jpwinkler.daf.gui.ApplicationPaneExtension.

They can provide:

• new views on the database
• new database classes
• global menus
• (create an issue in gitlab if you are seriously lacking something)

Local plugins

Must implement at least one of:

• de.jpwinkler.daf.gui.databases.DatabasePaneExtension (for the database view)
• de.jpwinkler.daf.gui.modules.ModulePaneExtension (for the module view)
• If other views on a database are available from other plugins, these can of course be extended as well if a respective interface is defined.

They can provide:

• global menus specific to this view
• additional panes for the view
• module view column presets (in the module view case)
• (create an issue in gitlab if you are seriously lacking something)

dafplugin

An example plugin providing simple dummies to showcase the dafgui's plugin functionality.

Compiling and running

The following should work out-of-the-box, no prerequisites necessary. All eCore/EMF/ant code generation will run automatically.

0. Install maven3
1. cd daf && mvn clean install
2. java -jar dafgui/target/dafgui-1.0.0-SNAPSHOT-jar-with-dependencies.jar

On cross-platform executables:

The dafgui JAR is platform-specific. If compiled on $X, it will only run on $X. This is due to the way JavaFX is packaged. The dafplugin jars themselves are platform-independent (as long as you do not add platform-specific calls) and can easily be installed via the File menu in dafgui.

The DOORS bridge automatically loads the necessary jacob DLL packaged in the JAR to interact with the DOORS ActiveX interface on Windows. No additional action should be required. This of course only works on windows.

Contributing

Please refer to CONTRIBUTING.md.