Enterprise Architect (EA) is a graphical modeling tool originally dedicated for modeling UML. To date EA is a general purpose modeling tool which supports many different modeling languages. Furthermore, with its UML Profile based technique you are able to define your own UML2 extensions in EA. Based on OMGs language MOF you are also able to model metamodels for defining “real” domain specific language (DSLs). However, EA lacks of automatic provided model validation for the defined DSLs.
In contrast to this, Eclipse consists of the eclipse modeling framework (EMF). EMF automatically generates an API for a provided ECORE Model, which is the Eclipse implementation of MOF. Furthermore, it already has a model validation for provided ECORE models. The drawback of EMF is the lack of a handy graphical modeling engine for the declaration of ECORE models.
The idea behind the integration of EA and EMF is to use the smooth modeling facilities of EA and marriage them with the formal modeling power of EMF.
The EA extension will behave as following: Every action in EA (creating a new element, e.g. a class) will cause the same action in EMF. Hence, EA can be used as graphical frontend to create EMF based models.
The first steps will be the synchronization of EA MOF models with EMF Ecore models. Further steps will be the bidirectional synchronization between Enterprise Architect and EMF and the creation of EMF based UML2 models.