g9 Modeling Tools

Are you developing Java applications that are taking forever to complete? Have you considered implementing web based UIs using React along with RESTful web services, but the time to code is overwhelming? Are your domain experts frequently changing their business requirements resulting in major code rewrites? If so, consider the g9 Low-Code Modeling and code generation tools.

As a low-code development platform, g9 is a suite of Eclipse plugins that integrates with the Java Development Tools that can manage the complexities of application development. It follows a domain driven methodology with automatic code generation providing visual UI design tools. Domain experts can focus their efforts on the domain logic and capture the knowledge in a domain model. The g9 tools can import the domain model into its workspace and allow users to add abstract data, model user interfaces using the WYSIWYG visual editor, model databases and specify web services. Using the supplied generators, both front-end and back-end application code can be generated, some of which make use of the included runtime libraries. This eliminates the need to code much application functionality.

Install g9 Modeling Tools, restart Eclipse and open the g9 perspective. Select File > New > Example... to open an existing example project (see the Screenshots).

Complete documentation is available from Help > Help Contents. Select g9 Documentation >  Getting Started > Getting started with g9 or download the pdf from Getting started with g9.

The g9 Modeling Tools help programmers become more efficient and more consistent by generating code, saving you time and money. Included with g9 are a series of generators used to generate the various parts of a java application utilizing various frameworks including Hibernate, Spring and Castor. Front-end supported UIs include React, ICEfaces, Angular/Bootstrap and Swing. Written in Xtend, the g9 generators are very readable and more concise than straight Java although generators can be written in any JVM compatible language (e.g. Java/Scala). Also, generators can be copied to create new variants or they can be modified to adhere to company standards and adapt best practices. You may even create a generator for another language. As business requirements change, the domain model can be updated and code regenerated without worrying about overwriting custom handwritten code. If you are spending too much time writing boilerplate code and implementing changing business requirements into your existing application, consider moving to a g9 low-code development environment.

To do this you need the following:

• The g9 Eclipse plugins.
• A code generator. Included with g9 are Dialog generators for developing user interfaces, Domain generators for generating java classes, Web Service generators, Object Selection generators for CRUD services and SOAP message generation and Database generators for Hibernate mapping and schema scripts (For a full list of the g9 generators, visit the generators page).
• A supported domain model. These include a UML model using Enterprise Architect, an Ecore/Xcore model using the Eclipse Modeling Framework or a WSDL document,  Also supported is using Java source code with annotations to describe the domain model. You can also connect to an existing database and convert the database schema to an Ecore/Xcore model or to Java source.

Download and try out g9 and check if this is something you and your team can benefit from.

Visit g9 Modeling Tools for more information.