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DOME Frequently Asked Questions

1. History and Relationships

1.1 Where did DOME come from?
The initial concepts for DOME were developed by the Honeywell Technology Center under government funding, but for the past several years DOME has been an active internally funded research project. Honeywell decided the use the GNU licenses as a means to publish DOME, and make it freely available to interested users and researches.

The Honeywell Technology Center will host and moderate this web site for as long as user interest and activity warrants.

1.2 What is the relationship of Honeywell to Cincom International?
No special relationship exists between Cincom International and Honeywell. There are no strategic partnerships, alliances, or investments between the two companies.

All rights and restrictions on the use of the Cincom's VisualWorks environment are determined by Cincom International We provide a link to their site only for convenience.

1.3 What is the relationship of DOME to VisualWorks?
DOME was written in the VisualWorks Smalltalk environment and VisualWorks is required to inspect DOME source code and modify it.

However, not all users need VisualWorks to run DOME. A DOME executable is available for Windows 95/98/NT, Linux, and for Sun Solaris.

1.4 Where can I get VisualWorks?
VisualWorks is available only from Cincom International, which offers free noncommercial versions of VisualWorks for Linux and Windows, and commercial releases for these and many other platforms (and a bunch of other products as well).

1.5 What versions of Smalltalk other than VisualWorks can be used with DOME?
None, to the best of our knowledge.

2. Models and Notations

2.1 What is a modeling notation?
A modeling notation provides a syntax for expressing conceptual models. DOME deals primarily with graphical modeling notations whose syntactic elements include nodes, connectors, containers, parts, diagrams, etc. DOME also allows each syntactic object to have a set of user-editable properties. Each type of object also has a distinctive appearance when displayed on the screen or printed.

2.2 What is a model?
A model is a specific collection of interconnected objects and their properties. A model can be conceived independently of any notation. In one sense, it is the essential information expressed through the use of a notation.

2.3 How does DOME compare to Rational Rose?
From DOME's point of view of, Rational Software's 'Rose' product is a notation specific modeling tool. A UML diagram editor is included with the latest release of DOME. However, Rose does not easily support replacing UML with a completely different notation, nor does it support developing new domain specific notations. On the other hand, Rational Rose supports UML thoroughly, and offers an extensive set of design, development, code generation and analysis services.

See the Projects page for more information on the DOME implementation of UML.

2.4 How can I distribute a new notation? Do I have to include it as part of the DOME Core library?
Consult the GNU Library General Public License for the answer to this question from a legal point of view.

From a technical perspective, there are two ways to distribute new notations. The first is as a Smalltalk parcel; consult the VisualWorks documentation to learn how to do this.

The second is as a ProtoDOME file. The DOME documentation explains this mechanism.

For many tools, there will be a point of departure that determines which of the two distribution methods will work. For example, if a user generates Smalltalk code from a DOME Tool Specification and then customizes some of that code, the notation is no longer "ProtoDOME-able". Conversely, if the user adds Alter methods to a DOME Tool Spec, those cannot be automatically converted to Smalltalk code and ProtoDOME is the only way to see the full functionality.

2.5 What is ProtoDOME?
The principal way of developing a notation within DOME is to create a DOME Tool Specification (DTS). This is essentially an object model annotated with data about the notation's appearance and semantics. Once you have a DOME Tool Specification, you have two ways that you can "bring it to life." One way is to use the DTS editor to automatically generate Smalltalk code. The generated code plugs into the DOME core library and your notation appears as another choice in the DOME Launcher. The other way is to give it to ProtoDOME. ProtoDOME can directly "execute" most of a DOME Tool Specification. It's a little slower than generated code, but it dramatically speeds up the development of a DOME Tool Specification. In some cases, you may never need to generate Smalltalk code. There are limits to what can be expressed in DOME Tool Specifications, and in those cases you will need to bridge the gap with Smalltalk code.

2.6 Does DOME support the BNF (Backus-Naur) notation?
DOME doesn't currently have anything that is pre-wired to generate (or consume) BNF specifications. The document outline tool could be bent slightly to produce BNF specs, and it would be fairly straightforward to define a new tool using ProtoDOME.

3. Windows 95/98/NT

3.1 I get the following error when trying to launch DOME: "Can't open VISUAL.IM Usage Virtual Machine Filename [options] imageFilename." What should I do?
This occurs when trying to launch the DOME.exe directly, rather than from the Start Menu or from the "Start DOME" shortcut in the DOME directory. The DOME.exe requires the following command line parameter to launch successfully

'DOME.exe DOME.im'.

The DOME shortcut which has been included in the startup menu and in the main DOME directory already incorporate this command line. If you would like to create a new shortcut for DOME, it is recommended that you copy or move the shortcut in the DOME directory. However, if you wish to create a shortcut manually, please observe that: 1) the DOME executable requires a command line parameter to launch successfully. The full command line is 'DOME.exe DOME.im'. 2) the start-in and target properties of the short-cut must refer to the same directory where DOME.exe is located. For example, if the DOME executable is located on the C: drive in the DOME subdirectory of the Program Files root directory, the startup property of the shortcut should be "C:\Program Files\DOME\DOME.exe" DOME.im and the target property should be "C:\Program Files\DOME\"

4. Linux

4.1 Will DOME work under any of the Linux distributions?
Probably. But we have done our work with Red Hat 5.1 and have not tested DOME under other distributions. Whatever distribution you use, be sure it includes glib5 if you're going to attempt to install VisualWorks 3.1. Also, check the Cincom site for recent information.

4.2 Do I have to install VisualWorks to run the Linux version of DOME?
No, with DOME 5.3, you do not need VisualWorks to run the Linux version of DOME. DOME 5.3 is available in 'run-time' form, which uses the VisualWorks virtual machine rather than the full development environment.

However, if you want to modify the DOME core, a full version of VisualWorks is still required.

5. Miscellaneous

5.1 What is the significance of the seal icon?
There really isn't much. A few of us were chatting and decided that we need a friendly, even playful identification for DOME, and this was the first idea to catch our fancy. He is named Tappy, after an original DOME developer (who is not entirely sure he likes sharing his name with a seal, even if the connection is somewhat disguised.)

Last updated 8/21/00