As a reminder, OSGi DevCon London happens tomorrow, February 23rd. If you want to learn about OSGi from the experts and live in the area, I highly recommend you visit.

I’m personally excited about Kirk Knoernschild’s keynote about OSGi in the Enterprise: Agility, Modularity and Architecture’s Paradox. You can view the full program here.

I will be speaking about Eclipse, OSGi and API Evolution and also will be participating in the spicy OSGi Development Tooling Panel. As always, if you want to chat about Eclipse, OSGi or open source over frosty beverages… feel free to find me.

If you want to follow via Twitter, there are two tags you should pay attention to: #jaxlondon and #osgidclon

Tags: OSGi

The RAP team just announced the availability of RAP 1.3 M5!

If you’re interested in single-sourcing Eclipse-based applications, please give it a try.

In the 1.3 M5 release, the RAP team added more SWT API to make single sourcing existing applications easier:

• Composite#layout( Control[], int )
• MouseEvent#stateMask
• Widget#reskin( int ) and SWT.Skin event
• ImageData
• ImageLoader
• ImageLoaderEvent

The team also added IApplication support which simply translates into one less extension point you have to use to create a RAP application. In the past, RAP had its own entrypoint extension point which performed a similar role to what the application support does in Equinox already.  This should make RAP even easier for RCP developers to get into.

RAP is also taking advantage of the Equinox extension registry is able to handle multiple locales.

So please give RAP a try if you’re interested in bringing your RCP application to the web.

Tags: rap

Here’s a gentle reminder that OSGi DevCon London 2010 is happening in a few weeks.

I highly recommend registering if you’re interested in OSGi. There will be people from all over the OSGi community including some great tutorials. I’ll be giving a talk regarding OSGi and API evolution… with some stories of how we handle the problem at Eclipse, how it’s handled elsewhere and what are the gaps. I’m also excited about the OSGi Development Tooling Panel that Christian Dupuis, Peter Kriens, David Savage, Toni Menzel and I will be hosting. If you were looking at a time to connect (or praiseand lambast us) with some of the OSGi Tooling folks, this would be a good time. We’re hoping for a lively and friendly discussion.

Feel free to check out the schedule online for the full listing of talks and tutorials.

I hope to see you there.

Tags: OSGi

Yesterday, the EclipseCon Program Committee made the final tough decisions and pressed the button to notify people if their submissions got accepted or not. I had the honor of putting together the Eclipse Runtime (EclipseRT) content.

If you’re coming to EclipseCon, you’ll have a great opportunity to learn about EclipseRT and OSGi.

Here are some of my favorite selections for runtime…

Tutorials

Getting Started with Eclipse RT
Build a Working OSGi Application
Building Server-Side Eclipse based web applications

Talks

Gemini – Helping Shape the Future of Enterprise Java
Composite Bundles – Isolating Applications in a Collaborative OSGi World
ScalaModules: OSGi the Easy Way with a Scala DSL

I hope you enjoy the program!

Tags: eclipseRT, equinox

Today, the Eclipse Foundation announced two new projects at Eclipse.org, Graphiti and Virgo.

The Graphiti project aims to offer an Eclipse-based graphics framework to enable easy development of state-of-the-art diagram editors for domain models. SAP plans to contribute the developed framework. This could have a large impact in the Eclipse Modeling space where graphic modeling is only getting better and better. The contribution is also important because SAP is showing that it’s strongly committed to the Eclipse ecosystem.

The Virgo project will provide a runtime platform for the development of server-side enterprise applications built on top of Equinox, and optionally using modules from the Gemini project. On top of that, the Virgo project solidifies the EclipseRT vision that a lot of us have been preaching for awhile.

Want to learn more about EclipseRT? Check out the whitepaper.

Another thing to note about the Virgo project is that tooling will be coming along but contributed to specific projects at Eclipse.

Developer tools that provide support for Virgo are out of scope for the Virgo project as part of EclipseRT. However, the Virgo team also propose to work with the existing WTP and PDE projects to contribute relevant developer tools for Virgo to those projects. These contributions will be based upon the existing Bundlor and dm Server development tools projects detailed below.

So far, it looks like three out of twelve zodiac signs are taken for OSGi related projects.

Which one will be next ?

Tags: eclipse, gemini, OSGi, virgo

The RAP team is proud to announce the fourth milestone for the Eclipse Helios release.

What’s new? Well, RAP now supports drag and drop semantics. The user can use the mouse and keyboard the way he is used to in his desktop applications to move, copy or link data. The API is SWT-compatible, using DragSource, DropTarget and Transfer.

JFace ControlDecoration support has been added to RAP so you can make your controls look pretty now.

There were many other features and fixes in the release, read the new and noteworthy for more information. If you have any feedback, please let the RAP team know on their mailing list.

Tags: rap

On December 14, 2009, the Eclipse Foundation is hosting a webinar that will include speakers from Cisco, Morgan Stanley and eBay discussing deploying Eclipse to thousands, and even tens of thousands, of their developers.

Here’s the breakdown of the schedule…

• Dennis Vaughn, Cisco
  • Scalability (65k + source files)
  • Diverse Deployments (geographically, NFS, OS/Versions)
  • Engineering Environment Diversity (legacy tools, acquisitions)
  • Working Culture (curmudgeons versus new hires, ROI versus VI/Emacs)
• Miles Daffin, Morgan Stanley
  • Enterprise Constraints and their Consequences for Eclipse Provisioning
  • Next Steps: Further Reduce Total Cost of Ownership and Provide more Useful Features as Needed
• Joep Rottinghuis, eBay
  • Scalability (100k + source files)
  • Deployment (individualized workspaces)
  • Usage Tracking (who is using what, and what issues are in what versions)
  • Manifest Maintenance (OSGi bundle/package versions)

Please register via email if you’re interested.

Tags: eclipse, OSGi

Last week, Jeff McAffer and I had the honor to attend the Eclipse Vienna DemoCamp hosted at the beautiful TU Vienna campus.

There were about 80 people that showed up and many interesting talks were given. Instead of going through all of them, I’ll highlight some of the ones I personally enjoyed. The day started with Werner Keil giving a talk about the Spatio-Temporal Epidemiological Modeler (STEM) project at Eclipse. STEM is a tool designed to help scientists and public health officials create and use spatial and temporal models of emerging infectious diseases. These models can aid in understanding and potentially preventing the spread of such diseases. The STEM project should serve as a reminder that Eclipse is entering new verticals and isn’t just an IDE.

The next talk I found fascinating was e4 by Tom Schindl.

Tom did a great job explaining why e4 exists, why EMF and how people can get involved. In his demo, Tom was self-hosting the workbench using CDO. Since the workbench model is now based on EMF, there’s a lot of interesting technologies to take advantage of in the Eclipse Modeling space. Another talk that intrigued me was by Christoph Mayerhofer who spoke about ReviewClipse.

ReviewClipse is an integrated code review tool, that helps developers to review the source code continuously. From my point of view, this project is awesome and direly needed at Eclipse. If we had first class code review support at Eclipse and had it integrated with Mylyn… my life would be much simpler. At the moment, ReviewClipse only integrates with SVN, but future connectors are planned. The authors of the tool are looking for an open source license and I highly recommend they choose the Eclipse Public License (EPL) and move the code to Eclipse where more people would be exposed to the terrific tool. If you think this is a good idea too, please email the project.

After that, I enjoyed more talks from the Viennese Eclipse community.

Jeff McAffer and I also gave a talk introducing people to EclipseRT and Toast. It seems people are understanding what EclipseRT is really about now that we have a great example of the power of the technology via Toast. A decent example can speak volumes to potential adopters of your technology.

In the end, I’m amazed to see how strong the Austrian Eclipse community is and only see great things in terms of community growth. And finally, special thanks to Michael Clay and Peter Kofler for organizing the event and allowing us to speak.

Tags: democamp, eclipseRT

I enjoy seeing people use EclipseRT technology in the wild. Recently I met and spoke with Austin Riddle from the Texas Center for Applied Technology (TCAT) about how they are using the Eclipse Rich Ajax Platform (RAP) and what applications they are building with it.

1. What does your application(s) do?

We have several live RAP applications that take the form of information dashboards. These dashboards allow decision-makers and analysts to disseminate information and produce a common operating picture related but not limited to global biosurveillance and large-scale emergency preparedness/management. Users can log in to our systems, customize their view of information via component and profile switching, visually integrate information within the dashboard and selectively share information between echelons of human infrastructure. Our US government customers have been very pleased with the power and flexibility of the systems.

2. Why did you choose Eclipse RAP?

We needed a powerful Rich Internet Application. We needed one that had to provide capabilities that frankly push the limits of what a traditional RIA could deliver. It also had to perform on older hardware and software. After working with and analyzing other options, including GWT, Flex, OpenLaszlo and others, we decided that RAP provided both the features we needed to fulfill our requirements, and the framework to develop custom features that empower our users even more. Being able to leverage other Eclipse Runtime Technology in our applications greatly reinforced our decision.

3. How did single sourcing benefit your project?

Our organization has a significant investment in Eclipse RCP capabilities that we needed to leverage in order to meet our dashboard requirements. It was amazing to see elements from our desktop systems just “appear” in our RAP application after just “dropping” the bundles in. Also, during our development process, we actually wrote capabilities in our RAP application that could be used in our desktop RCP applications. This “reverse” single sourcing was a pleasant surprise!

4. In the end, how did RAP help and benefit your project?

Most impressively, we were able to implement a first working prototype of a dashboard system in 30 days! RAP gave us the ability to rapidly prototype and ultimately provide solid systems that have withstood the scrutiny of rigorous government security evaluations. Currently, we are looking into bringing even more of our eclipse-based desktop investments to the web.

Cool stuff, huh?

Tags: case study, eclipseRT, rap, rcp

This is the final reminder for the Eclipse Vienna DemoCamp tomorrow.

I’m excited as this is my first Vienna Eclipse DemoCamp

There’s a great list of presentations and speakers:

• Werner Keil, Creative Arts & Technologies, “Spatio-Temporal Epidemiological Modeler“
• Lixto Team, Lixto Software GmbH, “Eclipse-related aspects in Lixto Visual Developer“
• Christoph Mayerhofer, INSO, “ReviewClipse – Continuous Code-Reviews within the Eclipse IDE”
• Chris Aniszczyk and Jeff McAffer, EclipseSource, “Introduction to EclipseRT and Toast“
• Tom Schindl, BestSolution.at, “E4 – A short overview”
• Robert Handschmann, Sphinx IT Consulting, “MDSD with Serapis using Eclipse Plugins”
• Maximilian Weißböck, The Business Kitchen – “Speed up your development with Eclipse and Xtext”
• Karl Hönninger, s-IT Solutions GmbH, “openXMA DSL” openXMA – Integrated presentation layer modelling
• Florian Pirchner, “Riena-EMF-Dynamic-Views (redview)”
• Philip Langer, Business Informatics Group, TU Wien, “The Operation Recorder: Specifying “Model Refactorings By-Example”
• Michael Clay, codeworkz.at, “Xtext“

There are currently over 80 people registered; if you’re in the area, please register and swing by!

Hope to see everyone there.

Tags: democamp, vienna