Back at EclipseCon 2013, Stéphane Bonnet (Thales) and I introduced Sirius: our answer to the pain of building custom modeling environments. Instead of struggling with heavy GMF developments or limited UML profiles, Sirius made it possible to create rich, multi-view workbenches—diagrams, tables, trees—directly inside Eclipse, with very little technical overhead.
I walked the audience through its journey: from the first Thales/Obeo prototypes in 2007, to real pilots in 2009 with Obeo Designer, and eventually to the open-source Sirius project. Along the way, I showed how Thales applied it across avionics, space, transportation, and more—sometimes with models running hundreds of diagrams and thousands of nodes. Other industrial players like Alstom used Sirius for safety analysis in rail, and Syleps for industrial configurators. By 2013, Sirius was mature, backed by years of operational feedback, and ready to become part of the Eclipse Modeling Project.
Key Takeaways
- Origins: Joint Thales/Obeo effort; first prototypes in 2007, operational pilots by 2009.
- What it does: Lets you build multi-view modeling workbenches (diagrams, tables, trees) with specification + runtime layers.
- Adoption: Used across critical sectors—avionics, security, space, transportation, radar, air traffic control.
- Scale: Industrial models with hundreds of diagrams and thousands of nodes.
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Showcases:
- Thales workbenches for search & rescue operations.
- Alstom safety analysis for rail (formal hazard/accident rate modeling).
- JavaEE app design with UML.
- Syleps Configurator for industrial processes.
- Engineering maturity: Automated validation, regression testing, ergonomic and performance fixes (transactions, layouts, GMF tweaks).
- Open source path: By 2013–2014, Sirius was transitioning into Eclipse, with its 1.0 release planned for Luna.
- Community: Invitation to join and contribute—“This is only the beginning!”
Context
- Event: EclipseCon, Boston
- Date: 2012–2013
- Program: https://www.eclipsecon.org/2013/sessions/your-custom-modeling-environment-definition-made-easy-last
- Slides: https://cedric.brun.io/talks/EclipseConUS2013/EclipseCon_2013_Sirius_Your_Custom_Environment_Made_Easy_At_Last_0.pdf