Today’s a great day. The Eclipse Foundation accepted the proposal for the RTP Project. RTP stands for Runtime Packaging.  And here’s what it’s all about.

Marcus Baker wrote an article called “Install Me“, which was published in the book “97 things a programmer should know“. On two pages he shows the reader exactly how important the first minutes are when a new user tries to get familiar with your software. He argues that it is the responsibility of  the software developer, to make it as easy as possible for the user to see that your software is what he needs.

Currently we don’t do a good job with this at EclipseRT. There are several EclipseRT technologies out there and every one provides an individual starting point for new users. From my point of view, changing this would bring EclipseRT a big step further.

That’s the inspiration behind the RTP project.  All that a user should have to do is download – install – run. The idea is to create one or more common starting points that new users can use to get familiar with EclipseRT technology.  Once we have the installation accomplished, we’ll have to convince the user with good examples and documentation. Investigation shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes. If the user doesn’t see what he needs in his first five minutes, the software will not get a second chance. There is also the chance of course, that the annoyed user might spread the word that the software doesn’t do the job right.  So, its definitely worthwhile to invest in keeping new users happy.

And this is what RTP is all about:  working with as many EclipseRT projects as possible to provide a really good out-of-the box experience for new users. If you are interested in this project please let me know. We welcome all help towards succeeding with RTP. If you want to learn more about RTP there are also two EclipseCon 2011 submissions (submission 1, submission 2) you can read.

Tags: BIRT, ecf, eclipse, eclipseRT, emf, epp, equinox, ercp, OSGi, p2, rap, riena, swordfish

Finally I had some time to write down some of my experiences with integrating the Business Intelligence Reporting Tools (BIRT) into a Rich Ajax Platform (RAP) application. I wrote it all down in a small tutorial that shows how you can integrate charts and reports seamlessly in your RAP application. Topics covered in the tutorial include how to setup the environment to let BIRT and RAP play well together.

Many thanks to BIRT committer, Virgil Dodson, to help with this tutorial- it was really great to get Eclipse committers from different projects working together!

Tags: BIRT, chart, rap, report, swt, tips

“A picture is worth a thousand words” – a true story.

The technology for impressive charts and reports already has a name in the mindset of Eclipse enthusiasts – it’s BIRT. But with the growing number of RAP applications in the wild, there is a big demand to integrate such technologies like BIRT into RAP applications. If you want to have nice colorful charts and good looking reports in your RAP application, why don’t you just drop in to the talk of Virgil Dodson and me about integrating BIRT into RAP. It’s not that hard, believe me!

We will give you advice how to avoid some of the common pitfalls and show you the possibilities you have to tweak your reports. Even if you want to single source your application with RCP, you can still use all the existing BIRT features as you know them. If you’re not yet familiar with the features of RAP itself, I think Ralf and Rüdiger would be glad to explain you all the details with hands-on examples in their tutorial on Monday.

It’s going to be a great conference. Register now and we’ll see you there.

Tags: BIRT, eclipsecon, rap, Single Sourcing