Excellent Eclipse CNF Article

Zambrovski, yes the same expert who saved my head three months ago, has written an excellent follow up to his article on Eclipse CNF ing on the main feature of the CNF – the contribution of content to the same navigator by several independent plug-ins. Zambrovski explains some minor changes introduced to the CNF in the Gallileo Edition, and then focuses on the content itself and finally provide an overview of how the action contributions can be provided. In the end of the post, he also presents some ideas on control of dynamic content .

The source code to this post is available for download. It includes two plug-in projects (the CNF and the child content) which are packaged into a small RCP application.

Click here to read the complete article.

Build a Next Gen Platform for Pervasive, Component-based Applications and Tool

The Eclipse platform was first targeted at building an extensible IDE component framework. It has since grown to include a Rich Client Platform, enabling whole new categories of scenarios and domains. As the software landscape changes, so must the Eclipse platform in order to remain relevant and vibrant. These trend lines point to web technologies, new user interface metaphors, and distributed infrastructure. Now is the time to rethink elements of the platform so that Eclipse may remain at the forefront of application development.

The mission of the e4 project is to build a next generation platform for pervasive, component-based applications and tools.

A wealth of technical information on e4 can be found on the e4 wiki page. The wiki also provides more detailed planning information, and a variety of channels for communicating with the e4 developers: http://wiki.eclipse.org/e4

Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse 11gR1 released on Eclipse 3.5 and 3.4

Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse (OEPE), the #1 free development environment for Oracle WebLogic Server, is now available on new brand new Eclipse 3.5, as well as 3.4. This release introduces new tools for Oracle WebLogic Server, easier WebLogic / EclipseLink configuration, and new WebLogic JAX-WS Web Services tools. This free set of certified Eclipse plug-ins is designed to help develop, deploy, debug, and test applications for Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle Database. It installs as a plug-in to your existing Eclipse, or will install Eclipse for you.

OEPE 11gR1 combines innovative commercial features with Oracle's open source contributions to the Eclipse platform. Eclipse developers targeting WebLogic Server, Java SE, Java EE, Web Services, XML, the Spring Framework, and database development can simply use Oracle's Eclipse Update site to access these free tools:

Server plug-ins for multiple versions of Oracle WebLogic

Vendor – specific WebLogic support like the new weblogic-ejb-jar.xml and JSR88 Editors

JAX-WS Web Service development and testing tools, including the new JAX-WS Bindings Customization Editor.

Object – Relational Mapping Workbench (JPA Entity Editor, Mapping Wizards)

Spring IDE Project and Spring code generation wizards, including the new Java Web Service from a Spring Bean wizard.

Core WebLogic Server IDE Support (Deployment Descriptor Editors, Shared Java EE Libraries, etc)

Oracle Database Tools (Schema Viewer, DDL generation)

Eclipse India Summit 2009 - My Experience

It been more than a week, and I have been meaning to write about it. FOLKS, this is by all means the best event that I have attended in my professional life as a software developer. The entire program was crafted in a way that provided me with opportunities to move about from in depth workshops to less intensive focused sessions. I attended both the workshops by Ilya Shinkarenko.

In the first workshop Ilya showed how to make a simple RCP application flexible with OSGi Services, extensible with Extension-Points and achieve production quality leveraging from advanced concepts like usage of Adapters, JFace Data Binding, Presentation API and, finally, deploying the product with P2 provisioning mechanism. In the second workshop we had a look at OOP design patterns from another perspective: how this or that pattern is used in Eclipse and what are the possible advantages or pitfalls.

The focused sessions I attended included the one from Anshu Jain - Eclipse as a Framework of Frameworks. He took a very simple example to motivate the idea of framework architectures, and how one could easily conceive and build frameworks without much effort. The latter parts took the above concepts to explain the eclipse architecture, and also explained how the eclipse framework is intuitively a "framework of frameworks", and that too a very powerful one.

I also attended Ankur Sharma's Eclipse 3.5 PDE Target Platform Story and found the new look platform story very compelling. Another excellent session was the one hosted by Shaun Smith. We have been looking at harnessing Java Persistence 2.0 at our organization very recently, and this talk came as a blessing.

Overall, I had a very fulfilling experience at the summit and look forward in eanest to attend the next edition. I heard from Saltmarch, the organizers that they will run this as an annual feature. So bring it on in July 2010 if not earlier.

GUIdancer 3.1 released

Version 3.1 of GUIdancer is now available for download. As well adding support for the testing of GEF (Graphical Editing Framework) components, the new version is available for MAC OSX as a beta, and is compatible with Eclipse 3.5. Increased platform and application support are not the only areas where the Eclipse-based test tool has been expanded. GUIdancer's efficient keyword-driven approach has also been extended to improve the testing of dynamic tables. Learn more: http://www.bredex.de/

Going to Eclipse India Summit

The biggest summit for the Eclipse ecosystem is coming to Bangalore, India, July 17-18. More info here: http://www.eclipsesummit.com/.

It has a first rate agenda, some excellent speakers (both International and local flavors), and is being held at the Chancery Pavilion, a 5* hotel in downtown Bengaluru. I wouldn't miss it for anything. Stay tuned for the summit related posts.

Instantiations Product Updates Synchronized with Eclipse 3.5 Galileo Release

Instantiations, Inc., a leading provider of software quality, security and productivity solutions for the Eclipse open source software platform, today announced that its entire Eclipse-based product line has been updated in conjunction with the annual Eclipse release, Galileo. In addition to adding support for Eclipse 3.5, significant new and enhanced functionality has been added across the product line. Further, Instantiations now offers a new product, WindowTester Runner™ that offers GUI test execution as a separate function from test creation, ideal for large Eclipse development groups.

The Galileo release train consists of Eclipse 3.5, as well as 33 different Eclipse projects and 24 million lines of code, significantly up from last year's record Ganymede release of 23 projects and 18 million lines of code. The coordinated release allows Eclipse users and adopters to take advantage of the innovations and new features created by the different Eclipse projects.