About the Fraclet Annotation Framework

Title: Fraclet Tutorial
Author: Romain Rouvoy (INRIA), Nicolas Pessemier (INRIA)
Version: 2.0 (Fraclet-xdoc)
Version: 2.0 (Fraclet-annotation)
Released: August 30^th, 2006

Fraclet is both an implementation of the Fractal specifications conformed to the level 0.1, and an annotation framework for the Fractal component model. Fraclet is composed of several annotations and plugins to generate automatically various artifacts required by the Fractal component model. Annotations provide a way to describe the component meta-information directly in the source code of the content class. Fraclet plugins generate either Fractal component glue, FractalADL definitions or Monolog configurations.

This approach has several benefits:

You don't have to worry about out dating deployment meta-data whenever you touch the code. The deployment meta-data is continuously integrated.
Working with only one file per component gives you a better overview of what you're doing. If your component consists of several files, it's easy to lose track. If you have ever written an Enterprise Java Bean, you know what we mean. A single EJB can typically consists of 7 or more files. With Fraclet you only maintain one of them, and the rest is generated.
You dramatically reduce development time, and can concentrate on business logic, while Fraclet generates 60% of the code for you.

Two implementations of the Fraclet annotation framework exist: Fraclet XDoc and Fraclet Annotation.

Fraclet XDoc uses the XDoclet generation engine to produce the various artifacts required by the Fractal component model.
Fraclet-Annotation uses the Spoon transformation tool to enhance the handwritten program code with the non-functional properties of the component model.

1. Fraclet Documentation

The Fraclet XDoc documentation.

The Fraclet Annotation documentation.

2. Fraclet Availability

Fraclet is freely available under an LGPL licence at the following URLs:

CVS repository: you can checkout Fraclet XDoc and Fractal Annotation from the Fractal CVS repository by specifying fraclet-xdoc or fraclet-annotationas module name.
Download: you can download Fraclet XDoc or Fraclet Annotation archives from the Fractal GForge interface.

3. Dissemination

R. Rouvoy, N. Pessemier, R. Pawlak, P. Merle, Apports de la programmation par attributs pour le modèle de composants Fractal, at the 5th French speaking days on Component-Oriented Progamming, October 2006 [slides]
R. Rouvoy, N. Pessemier, R. Pawlak, P. Merle, Using Attribute-Oriented Programming to Leverage Fractal-Based Developments, at the 5th Fractal workshop at ECOOP 2006, July 2006 [slides]
R. Rouvoy, Fraclet: Making Fractal Developments Easier!, at the Jacquard Research Meeting, January 2006 [slides]