Automated Component Bridge Generator

This position paper describes an automatic component bridge generator for embedding COM components in the Eclipse rich client platform. While embedding of ActiveX controls (graphical COM components) is in principle possible in Eclipse, the data model of the control is not easily accessible, and if done anyway, the task is quite tedious and error-prone. Therefore an automated component bridge generator was developed based on a model transformation framework, that analyses information about the component and automatically generates a bridge for the component to be used in Java. Special care must be taken of resource management, event handling, type mapping and constructs in COM that are not directly available in Java like optional or out parameters. Using the generator bridges were created within minutes that previously took several months to code. They allow numerous components like Word or Nero Burning Rom to be used, embedded and controlled from Java applications.