Object, Process, and XML Language Definition Files

A separate definition file is supplied for each OOM, BPM, and XSM language supported by PowerDesigner, which defines the syntax and guidelines for generating objects and implementing stereotypes, data types, scripts and constants for the language. You must select a language definition file when you create an OOM, BPM, or XSM.

The following types of language definition files are explained in this chapter:

OOM - Object language definition files (.xol)
BPM – Business process language definition files (.xpl)
XSM - XML language definition files (.xsl)

Note: The PDM uses a different form of definition file (see DBMS Definition Files), and other model types do not have definition files but can be extended with extension files (see Extension Files).

All target languages have the same basic category structure, but the detail and values of entries differs for each language:

Settings - contains data types, constants, namings, and events categories used to customize and manage generation features. The types of items in this category differ depending on the type of resource file.
Generation - contains generation commands, options, and task.
Profile - contains extensions on metaclasses.

The root node of each file contains the following properties:

Property	Description
Name	Specifies the name of the target language.
Code	Specifies the code of the target language.
File Name	[read-only] Specifies the path to the .xol, xpl, or .xsl file. If the target language has been copied to your model, this field is empty.
Version	[read-only] Specifies the repository version if the resource is shared via the repository.
Family	Enables certain non-default features in the model. For example, object languages of the Java, XML, IDL and PowerBuilder® families support reverse engineering.
Subfamily	Fine-tunes the features for a given family. For example, in the Java family, the J2EE subfamily supports EJBs, servlets and JSPs.
Enable Trace Mode	Lets you preview the templates used during generation. Before starting the generation, click the Preview page of the relevant object, and hit the Refresh tool to display these templates. When you double-click on a trace line from the Preview page, the Resource Editor opens to the corresponding template definition in the Profile\Object\Templates category. The code of the template may be colored (see Syntactic coloring in section Generated Files category).
Comment	Specifies additional information about the target language.

Settings Category: Process Language
The Settings category contains the following items used to control the data types, constants, namings, and events categories used to customize and manage BPM generation features:
Settings Category: Object Language
The Settings category contains the following items used to control the data types, constants, namings, and events categories used to customize and manage OOM generation features:
Settings Category: XML Language
The Settings category contains the Data types category that shows a mapping of internal data types with XML language data types.
Generation Category
The Generation category contains categories and entries to define and activate a generation process.
Profile Category (Definition Files)
The language definition file Profile category can contain Stereotypes, Extended attributes, Methods and so on, to extend the metaclasses defined in the PowerDesigner metamodel.