How can you chain/stitch Maven plugins?

I want to chain two Maven plugins which should execute in sequence. The output from the first plugin should be used as input for the second plugin. Let me explain:

I want to write a plugin which generates resources and sources, such as configuration files, Java classes, ... Let's call this plugin generator-plugin.
This plugin needs input information to generate all this. This information can be retrieved from file system or from a SQL database. Possibly, in the future one might introduce several other input sources. My idea is to write two plugins, one for getting all information from the file system and another from a SQL database.

This gives:

information-plugin-file ---\
                           |--- generator-plugin
information-plugin-sql  ---/

How can this be done with Maven? Can you chain plugins? I am familiar with writing basic Mojo's, but I have no idea how to approach this, hence this question.

One possibility is to output to a standardized file in information-plugin-file/information-plugin-sql and let the subsequent generator-plugin plugin read from the same file (the Unix way of working, everything is a file).

But I am looking for more direct, Maven specific approaches of doing this. Are there such approaches?

With regards to execution order, all plugins will run in the generate-sources phases and will be defined in correct order in the <plugins> section. So that is already covered I think.

Solution

AFAIK, plugins in maven are designed to be totally independent, so the following methods of sharing the information can be used:

Sharing via maven properties:

Its possible to set a property in the first plugin, and probably it will be accessible from within the second plugin

import org.apache.maven.project.MavenProject;
// now inject it into your mojo of the first plugin 
@Parameter(defaultValue = "${project}")
private MavenProject project;

// Inside the "execute" method:
project.getProperties().setProperty("mySampleProperty", <SOME_VALUE_GOES_HERE>);

Sharing via Files

The first plugin can generate some output file in the 'target' folder And the second plugin can read this file

Write a "wrapping" plugin that executes other plugins (like both first and second plugin). After all mojos are just java code that can be called from the aggregator plugin

You can find Here more information about this method