Instructions for Installation  
  To start with AXgen you have to download a complete distribution or to check out the latest version from cvs. This guide assumes you downloaded the complete distribution "axgen-2.x.zip".  
  Unpack the zip file to a directory <path> of your choice. A directory <path>/axgen-x.x containing the unpacked binary distribution will be created. It will have the following directory structure:

directory structure
 
  After that you must download ANT and make sure the environment variable ANT_HOME points to the base directory of ANT. As AXgen is an ANT task itself, you need ANT to build AXgen as well as to run AXgen.  
  Building AXgen  
  The AXgen distribution contains a compiled version of AXgen (a jar file in the lib directory). If you plan to use AXgen with the nsuml library, the distribution contains everything you need. There is no need to rebuild AXgen.  
  For legal reasons, AXgen does not contain the OMG UML metamodel. As the NetBeans MDR library depends on this metamodel, you need to download the metamodel and rebuild AXgen, if you wish to use AXgen with the NetBeans MDR library.  
 
  1. Download the metamodel from http://www.omg.org/cgi-bin/doc?ad/01-02-15 and put it to <path>/axgen-2.x/src/jmi.
  2. Run ANT (using the default target) in the project base dir to build the UML metamodel classes needed for the NetBeans MDR library.
That's all. You're ready to use AXgen. Go on and test it with the example model.
 
  Running the OJB example  
  In <path>/axgen-2.x/example/ you'll find an example model together with all needed configuration files. Let's have a closer look at the files:  
 
example.zargo
This file contains the model in Poseidon for UML 1.6 format (i.e. NetBeans MDR format). The file is in fact a zipped archive containing the XMI file.
build.xml
The ANT build-file used to run the example. As AXgen is implemented as an ANT task, this file is always needed. If you are not familiar to ANT, you may wish to have a look at http://ant.apache.org/ first.
axgen.properties
A properties file used by the ANT job. This allows the user to have one and the same build.xml file for different projects using specific settings in the properties file.
ojbhelper.properties
Another properties file used to configure a helper class. In our example we use this helper class for OJB specific stuff such as field and type conversion or string formatting.
 
  All but the first file are plain text files. They are explained in more detail later on. Feel free to take a look at them. Most things are commented in the files, so they won't be to hard to understand.  
  If you find other files in the same directory, they are probably generated by a previous run of AXgen.  
  Simply run ANT in a terminal window (or dos box under Win32) in the directory <path>/axgen-2.x/example. A directory <path>/axgen-2.x/example/build will be created containing the generated files.  
  Where can you go from here: