Eclipse Democamp Munich

We have changed the room, we have change the room again, but we finally did it. The Eclipse Democamp took place yesterday and was a great success. We were able to include all registrations. The room was packed, but everybody got a seat. Thanks to all the volunteers!

Here is a wrap up of the talks:



Bernhard demonstrates the Eclipse Prolog EMF Transformation Engine. It allows to define model transformations using constraints. The transformation itself explores possible solutions for transformations, which confirm to the defined constraints. He demonstrates this on a example from an automotive application.



Axel solves a very common problem with adpapters. He identified that the registration of many Adapters in EMF cause a performance problem. This is especially true if there are many adapters, which are not interested in an event. He proposes a solution based on hashmaps. The filter of every event registration is distributed in several hashmaps. This even allows fo and and or terms. The event filter can be defined via a custom API. It would be an interesting problem to transform existing filters written in Java to the more effective format.

Maximilian an me presented in a lightning session the EMF Client Platform, the EMFStore as well as the JDT Integration of the EMFStore. I do not know what exactly we have talked about :-)



Markus demonstrates advanced feature of Edapt (Cope). The tool allows to automatically migrate model instances, when the meta-model is changed. Therefore, changes on the meta-modell are recorded. In the talk he focused on an advanced feature. It allows to diff two existing versions of a meta-model which are already created without tracking the changes. The tool semi-automatically supports the user to recover the changes, which were done. Also he demonstrates how to define custom constraints.



Kai presented how to use CSS Styling in Eclipse 3.x. As no manager is in the room, he even shows source code :-) He points out the importance, that application have to be styled corresponding to an existing template, provided by a designer. The CSS feature of 4.x can also be used in 3.x. Themes can even be switched during runtime. All required sources and his slides can be soon found at the democamp wiki.

Ekke presented his lessons learned from developing mobile business applications based on Eclipse for Blackberry, IPhone and Android Adroid. Ekke has developed a number of custom widgets to better support UI development on the different platform. However the challenges for these applications are not limited to the client side, there are many challenges for the server side also such as data transmission.  A central paradigm in this context is the hollywood principle: don´t call us, we call you.

Then there was a short break...







After the break, Tom hold his famous and great Eclipse 4 talk. He summarized the news on the e4 project. He first explained that e4 started off on the wrong foot due to false communication. He clarified that it is not the main intention of e4 to move the eclipse platform to the web. Its main intention is a new and much more simple  programming model. For this purpose it heavily employs dependency injections. This decouples the implementations from the actual framework classes and eases testing a lot. Also with e4 all information on the workbench are represented in an EMF-based model which is rendered live. This means that all relevant information is concentrated in one place and can be modified there. This allows for more powerful and easier access. For legacy applications e4 offers a compatibility layer and its goal is to support 99.9% of all existing RCP applications for 3.x. Tom pointed out that there are still problems due to missing tool support for debugging because of dependency injection.
Then, there was a short break...

Holger Staudacher has presented the current state of RAP. RAP allows to single source web applications and RCP applications. During his talk he was asked about performance of RAP. In response Holger and Benny Muskalla showed how RAP can be even faster than RCP and is still very responsive even for DND and custom widgets that directly draw on a canvas. Also numerous options for theming RAP were demonstrated. For the next release RAP is going to suppot SWT 3.7 and implement non-native scrollbars to better support theming of scrollbars also.

ETrice, presented by Henrik Rentz-Reichert, is a new Eclipse project which is currently in incubation and still gathering community. Its goal is to implement the ROOM language, a language for object-oriented modelling of event-based real-time systems. Also it aims at providing a tool set for working with this language including X-Text-based and Graphiti-based editors.

And finally Benny, who works now at Tasktop, adresses typical issues in the every day work of a developer: multi-tasking, searching and interruptions. He shows that developers spend almost half of their time with tasks like that, which is not coding itself. Also 90% of the stuff we see in out workbench is irrelevant for the current taks. Goal: avoid friction and disatraction. Instead: flow and focus. The proposed solution is integrating the tasks of a developer into the Eclipse workbench from various sources. Based on these tasks, the context of the developer can be filtered and also easily switched. Most important thing: we all can sleep longer :-)
Very nice talk, have to try that out.

The event has shown the high interest in Eclipse in the region. And the goal for the next event is "Fill the Audimax" :-)
Thanks to the Eclipse Foundation and EclipseSource for sponsoring.