JinnIde - Advanced Features

JinnIde is the Jinni Prolog IDE Plugin for JEdit. From the Cassandra release onwards, a lot of new features have been added that make JinnIde the most powerful of the development environments with Prolog support. Should you find an IDE with Prolog support that achieves such a level, please tell me about it - but I do not think there exists such a thing! Take a look at the following to see what JinnIde has to offer.

GUI IDE based development

Now JinnIde comes with a variety of GUI-based helper tools, that make development for Jinni Prolog / Prolog as comfortable as developing Java in a modern Java IDE! In greater detail:

• Jinni Prolog project management with treeview-based project viewer, automated project/package creation and complete project-based architecture of Jinni Prolog-based applications
• automated creation of Jinni Prolog entities such as programs, classes and modules by means of automated class/module creation tools
• automated rule creation emphasizes rapid documentation-based development
• class/instance variables creation based on automated getter/setter creation
• GUI-controlled logging
• project viewer support includes extensible right-mouse-click menu with JinnIde commands

Server and JinnIde API support

• Stability controlled server ensures reliable client/server interaction with optional special support for Windows platforms
• JinnIde comes with its own uniform JinnIde Java API to use JinnIde independently from its JEdit environment

JinniEngineAnswer Framework System (JEAFS) - JinnIde's rule-based validation framework

The JinnIde CLIDE release comes with support for the application of Jinni Prolog as a validation engine. This is accomplished by the following tools available in JinnIde's templates tree:

• Create Exception: allows creating a Java exception that is used when an exception is thrown during the validation process on the Jinni Prolog side. This includes the automated generation of Java class source code together with its compilation into binary Java object code.
• Create Validator: this tool's function is to support the developer with the automated generation of a Jinni Prolog module that validates the Java input to be validated. The validator is based on specific input provided by the user and delivers validators that serve as a basis for validators in real-world applications.
• A test is available in the templates viewer - see the JinniEngineAnswer Test in the following section - to try out the validator and its validation exception that the user has automatically generated through above tools.

Thus the user is capable of generating the code in the following tool-based way:

• Create a JinnIde project(if not already there) using 'Create Project' from the JinnIde templates viewer
• Create the exception that is raised in case of a failing validation by using 'Create Exception' from the JinnIde templates viewer
• Create a validator i.e. either a Jinni Prolog module or program that validates the user input by using 'Create Validator' from the JinnIde templates viewer. Note that this validator just throws the exception generated in the foregoing step, which also suffices to test that the connection between Java and the JinnIde validation works; the real validation code then needs to be inserted there by the developer
• Run a test to check that the generated code works as expected by using JinnIde's Test utility which is also available in the JinnIde templates viewer (select JinniEngineAnswerTest once you have clicked on the rsp. template viewer entry)

Simple installation and extensibility

• complete open beanshell-based code allows adapting the GUI and everything else simply and straight-forwardly by the user/developer her/himself
• all-in-one platform-independent Java installer with fully choosable component-wise installation for Jinni Prolog version 12+

All the development features are directly accessible either by shortcut (user configured), from the templates viewer or by selecting a respective menu item from the JinnIde or Templates menu which you find underneath JEdit's Plugins menu.

A Java API for the JinniEngineAnswerFramework

The Java API for the JinniEngineAnswerFramework consists of the package tools.jinniengineanswer.*; its application is shown through a couple of examples

• TestJinniEngineAnswerFrameworkGetSimpleQuery: shows the application of the getSimpleQuery method which is based on a Jinni Prolog program
• TestJinniEngineAnswerFrameworkGetQuery: shows the application of the getQuery method which is based on a Jinni Prolog object

located in the root directory of JinnIde/jEdit. Start them by executing

    java -classpath .:jars/JinnIde.jar:jars/JinnIdeExceptions.jar:jars/JinniProlog.jar TestJinniEngineAnswerFrameworkGetSimpleQuery

in jEdit's/JinnIde's console command line.

You might want to modify the source. In this case, when recompiling the following line may be handy:

    javac -classpath jars/JinniProlog.jar:.:jars/JinnIdeExceptions.jar:jars/JinnIde.jar TestJinniEngineAnswerFrameworkGetSimpleQuery.java

Analogously the same lines can be used for the TestJinniEngineAnswerFrameworkGetQuery variation.

Automated self testability (experimental)

Finally, the latest hot edge of JinnIde's technology is its Test Tool, a pool of automated tests that allow running tests to verify the correctness of particular JinnIde features. It is available through the template viewer and currently includes the following tests:

• Simple Test: Switches Loq4Jinni on and tries Jinni Prolog's built-in member predicate, switches it off again and calls the member predicate the same way as before. This serves to see if Loq4Jinni works properly. By default the test is done a number of times to try it out for each possible JinnIde configuration. The JinnIde server is used by default as well and is restarted accordingly.
• Memory Leak Test: Calls JinniDoc to automatically generate the documentation of Loq4Jinni. By default this test is also done a number of times to try it out for each possible JinnIde configuration. Again, the JinnIde server is used by default as well and is restarted accordingly.
• Restart Test: Just concentrates on restarting the Jinni Prolog server to check if this works properly
• JinniEngineAnswer Test: Finally, this allows generating a Java class that calls the validator module generated by the automated templates tool "Create Validator" (see above) to test that it works as expected.