A scenario is now applicable to a type of the metamodel. Therefore, like any script, a scenario becomes an entity contained by a package, and appears, in Architect edition, in the tree of scripts.

The .scn files do no more exist. The projects older than this version are converted at the first loading.

The concept of GenerationDescription does no more exist. A scenario owns a service to select some objects of the model, and it can call some "generation steps", i.e. fileTemplates or other scenarios, applicable to the type of theses objects.

The fileTemplates have now a property "visibility". The scenarios and fileTemplates which have a private visibility, are not visible with the Developer edition.

For each scenario, as for templates, it is possible to specify a precondition, a preaction and a postaction.

To launch a generation from the model browser, you just have to select one or more instances and click on the "Generate…" item of the context menu.

Two modes of generation are available.

The first one consists in selecting the scripts or scenarios to apply on the selected objects. A dialog box proposes only the scripts are scenarios applicable on the type of the selected objects. With the

Architect edition, any script or scenario of the project can be selected this way. With the Developer edition, only the public scenarios and fileTemplates can be used.

The second one consists in selecting the files that can be generated from the selected objects.

It is possible to launch a partial generation from the containment tree in MagicDraw. You just have to select the objects and then use the context menu "Generate with Mia-Studio…". A dialog box appears, proposing the 2 generation modes explained above : by selecting scripts, or by slecting generated files. With Developer edition, only the public scenarios and fileTemplates area proposed.

Mia-Documentation allows you to build custom transformations to produce documents from your models according to your documentation standards and styles. Using this module requires a specific license.

The document generation occurs by merging two files:

• a composition stream (XML file) that contains the plain text of your document
• a document template (OTD file) containing the available styles.

With Mia-Generation, you realize the generator that will produce the composition stream and will launch the merge with the document template.

The generation trace has been enhanced to facilitate the debugging of a generator.

In the script definition area, use the Ctrl+Click shortcut: Hold down the Ctrl key and move the mouse over the name of the script until the name becomes underlined. The corresponding generated text is focused in the result area. Then click the hyperlink once to go the corresponding substep in the traces tree.

You can either use the context menu Go to substep.

The search from a selected text has been enhanced. A message warns you if a post action has been evaluated on the script result from where you are starting the search. This may reduce the reliability of the search.

A search history makes the access easier to the previous search results.

Mia-Studio 6.5 comes with a new edition : Community Edition. Community Edition is now the default mode available with both Developer and Architect licenses, and so allow to begin tu use Mia-Studio as soon as it is installed.

The Community edition is free and provides all the functionalities available with Mia-Studio Enterprise : you can edit, run and debug generation rules using all the features of the product without any time limit. But it has a limitation on the number of code lines than can be generated at once (1.500).

During the execution of a generation, while you have not reached the limit, the files are normally generated. Once you have reached the limit, the following files are not generated and they are indicated with an error.

A new option "group by file extension" have been added to group the generated files displayed in the result tree.

If you have activated the "group by status" option, the file extension will be considered for a sub-group of files with the same status.

The generation trace have been enhanced to facilitate the debugging of a generator.

In the trace of a template execution, the evaluated text fragments (calls to other scripts) are colorized to clearly distinguish them from the text directly defined by the template.

From any text fragment selected in a generated file (from the result tree or a trace step), you can go directly to the corresponding trace step.

From this step you access to the object of the model and the script responsible for the generation of the selected text fragment.

Previous versions of Mia-Studio already provided the possibility to enrich a template with a pre-condition (test if the template has to be executed) and post-action (treatment executed once the template has produced its text).

Mia-Studio 6.5 comes with pre-action to add a treatment (written in Java) executed just before the evaluation of a template (and just after the evaluation of the precondition).

In the code of a pre-action, a new API can be used to get the name of the file being generated, thus allowing operations to prepare the generation (check-out from a SCM for example).

A generation project contains scripts attached to a metaclasse (for example in UML : Package, Class, Attribute, Operation, ...). With the previous versions of Mia-Studio, it was not allowed to use a generation project with a different metamodel, even if the two metamodels contain the same metaclasses.

Now, with Mia-Studio 6.5, it is possible to force a generator to be launched with a model whose metamodel is different (of course, it will only work if the two metamodels are compliant : same metaclasses with same properties and relationships).

When editing a launcher, a new combo-box "Metamodel" is provided to select another metamodel (by default, the metamodel of the generation project is selected). Mia-Studio will automaticaly fill the "Format" combo-box with the available formats dedicated to the selected metamodel.

To avoid exporting MagicDraw models into EMF, Mia-Studio 6.2 provided a native connector that launch the generation directly from MagicDraw.

With Mia-Studio 6.5, this connector can be used directly from Mia-Generation: when you select a mdzip file (MagicDraw default format), Mia-Generation opens MagicDraw (in background) with this model and can launch the generation without any EMF export/import.

A VSPackage component comes with the installer Mia-Studio 6.2.0. It lets you use launchers from the interface of Visual Studio 2008, access the interface of Mia-Generation in Architect or Developer edition. Mia-Generation and Visual Studio communicate for example to display the generation results in Visual Studio.

With Mia-Studio 6.1, it is now possible to extend existing generators to adapt them to a specific context, without modifying the initial generator. This new functionality is a response to the need of being able to maintain a « core » generator common to several other generators for which we just have to define the differences.

To achieve this, Mia-Studio 6.1 allows to create a package that extends an existing one. This extension will contain a redefinition for each script we need to modify. During the execution of the generator, the extended scripts have the priority over the initial scripts.

When a script has been extended, it appears differently (gray, between parenthesis and with a specific icon) in the initial package.

In an extension, when a script extends another script from an initial package, it appears with a different icon too. This distinguishes it from other scripts belonging to the extension which do not redefine a script from a parent package.

Mia-Studio already provided a way to extend the current metamodel by defining new concepts from the types (metaclasses) already provided. For example, when working with UML, we use a profile to extend the class concept to define the page or table concepts.

With Mia-Studio 6.1, it is now possible to use several profiles with the same generator. Then one can define one profile by extension and improve the management of the added concepts. For example, one can define one profile by application layer: the « database » profile will contain the concepts such as table, column, index, etc…, when the «cinematic» profile will contain concepts such as page and action.

Mia-Studio 6.1 introduces the post-action mechanism for the generation templates. A post-action is a script, written in Java, executed just after the execution of the template. Within the code of a post-action it is possible to get the text generated by the template (manager.getGeneratedText()) and also modify this text (manager.setGeneratedText(String)).

For example, this functionality allows delegating generated code formatting : rather than managing both code generation and formatting, with a post-action this action can be done once the code has been produced. Another usage can be, for example, the update of the generation context with information coming from the generated text.

For FileTemplates (templates producing a file), a second type of post-action is available. A post-write-action allows executing an action just after the file has been written.

Each accessed script remains accessible through a shortcut added to a clickable drop-down list placed beside the title of the script edition tab. This list is populated all along the navigation among the scripts, and can be cleared at any time.

New refactoring functions allow for converting the nature of a script: from macro or service to template (or inversely).

At any time, it is possible to select a portion of an existing template and create a new script (template, macro, beginTag or endTag) from the selected text. In the initial template, the selection is automatically replaced by a call to this new script.

Also with Mia-Studio 6.1, it is possible now to execute model transformations written with ATL, a model-to-model component provided by Eclipse. Existing ATL transformations can then be reused inside a transformation chain built with Mia-Transformation.