Categories
My Updates

Eclipse workshop in IIIT Bangalore

So here I was conducting yet another workshop on Eclipse. This time it was in IIIT Bangalore.

The campus is great, so are the students. It was the most interactive session I have ever been to. The students were quite active throughout the day and all of us were filled with enthusiasm until the very end.

The workshop began at 9:30 am with Sudar Oli giving the kick off speech on IBM University Relation activities. This was followed by 2 theory sessions, followed by a hands-on session. The workshop lasted till 8 pm and I hear this is quite normal for guest lectures in IIIT!

Categories
World Wide Web

Eclifox – bringing Eclipse to the browser

We finally made it! Eclifox is now an Alphaworks technology.

So what is Eclifox?
In order to understand what Eclifox is, look at the screenshot below:


What do you see?

If you think that this is the screenshot of the Eclipse IDE, you are only partially right. Look again. It is Eclipse running in the Firefox browser!

Here is a flash demo of Eclifox. (Run it in full-screen). The demo shows the usage of Python and Ruby plugins from Eclifox.

A bit of history:
About a year and a half back I came up with a thought. How would it be if we were able to provide web based access to Eclipse functionality? Initially it was not clear how we could achieve this, but the idea seemed promising. So we thought we would give it a try by giving this of to a bunch of interns.

In came a group of 6 students who not only had the passion to complete this, but also the zeal to learn the technology required to make it work.

Hats off to the following interns who made it a reality:

  • Adarsh Ramamurthy
  • Karthik Ananth
  • Mohd Amjed Chand
  • Prasanna V. Pandit
  • Srirang G. Doddihal
  • Vikas Patil

The above interns from SJCE put their heart and soul to this effort and developed the whole thing in less than 4 months time. Personally, I enjoyed the 6 months time I spent on guiding these students. We have a stunned a lot of people within IBM with this idea. No one expected an internship project to get so much praise (or even criticism!).

Thanks to Kiran who provided guidance throughout the course of this project. Also for spending umpteen hours in getting this on alphaWorks! Also thanks to several people who provided the support when it was required.

And now about the technologies used:
The basic idea is to include a plug-in in Eclipse that helps us interact with Eclipse to fetch UI definitions and also to simulate events on Eclipse. The technologies used are primarily Javascript (with XMLHttp) on the client side and Jetty as the server embedded in Eclipse. For more information read the alphaWorks page.

So try it out and let us know what you feel!

Categories
World Wide Web

ApacheCon US 2007 / OS Summit Asia 2007

Two of my colleagues and friends Vamsi & Shiva, who are committers on Apache Geronimo will be conducting training sessions at ApacheCon US 2007 / OS Summit Asia 2007.

Java EE 5 App Development on Geronimo 2.0 simplified using Eclipse by Shiva Kumar
Attendees will learn how to develop, deploy, test and debug Java EE 5.0 applications on Apache Geronimo using Eclipse and WTP (Web Tools Platform). They will have hands-on lab exercises on (and hence be masterful at):

  1. Setting up the Eclipse IDE for Java EE 5.0 App Development on Geronimo v2.0, including starting/stopping of Geronimo server from within Eclipse.
  2. Developing a simple Java EE 5.0 application from scratch (consisting of a few JSPs, Servlets, Session Beans and JPA Entity Beans), and deploying and testing it on the Geronimo server.
  3. Adding MDBs and WebServices into the above application using Eclipse WTP v2.0 tools.
  4. Debugging Java EE applications using Eclipse.

Attendees will also compare their newly developed Java EE 5.0 application with an equivalent J2EE application, and left appreciative of some of the newest features brought by Java EE 5 (like Annotations) that greatly simplify enterprise application development.

ApacheCon link
OSSummit link

Securing Java EE Applications in Apache Geronimo by Vamsavardhana Reddy
The attendees will learn about the prerequisites for various security realms provided by Geronimo, the choice of data stores (Simple Text Files, LDAP, Database, Digital Certificates) they have for user credentials, how to create security realms to authenticate users using the data in these data stores, configure Web/EJB/EAR application security and enable advanced features like Principal wrapping, Single-Sign-On, Auditing and Lockout. After completing the training, the users will be in a position to decide what best suits their development/deployment needs, create security realms and create necessary deployment plans to secure their applications using the realms.

ApacheCon link
OSSummit link

Hurry up and register soon. There is a discount on the registration fee if you register before 22nd October 2007.

Categories
My Updates

Workshop on Eclipse in VIT, Pune

I was part of a team of three (myself, Sayeed Sanaullah and Gaurav Bhattacharjee) from ISL, who conducted a one day workshop on Eclipse in Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Pune.

We had 3 theory sessions and about 3.5 hours of hands-on sessions. We covered the following topics during the theory and practical sessions:
* Introduction to Eclipse
* Plug-in development in Eclipse
* RCP application development in Eclipse.

The response was decent and I truly enjoyed the day, although at the end of the day it left us really tired.

This workshop was conducted as part of the IBM Technology Day series that is being conducted in various colleges in India. This is the second time I am being involved in a IBM Technology Day.

The very first IBM Technology Day in India was conducted in SJCE, Mysore in April. This was a 2 day workshop with about 7 speakers from IBM Software Group, Systems Group and Global Services. There were students from 7 colleges in and around Mysore who were part of this.

Categories
My Updates

Lecture on Eclipse in VTU Edusat

I delivered a lecture on “Introduction to Eclipse and its usefulness” in VTU Edusat, a distance learning program of VTU. This is the first time I am delivering a lecture in VTU Edusat.

Here is what I liked about the program:
* Excellent use of technology to reach distant colleges in Karnataka.
* Currently Edusat has cast more than 3000 lectures. All of these lectures are available to the students if needed.
* There is good industry backing. This can help bridge the gap between industry and academia.

There are some things that will hopefully improve:
* It is more of a monologue right now. So there is absolutely no way of knowing the skill level of the students and tweak the lecture.

Hats off to the guys behind this mission. This is a good first step; however there are things that can improve. If you are part of University Relations in your company, do join the Edusat program and make a difference!

Categories
Technology

Eclipse Modeling Framework

Wonder what they used to develop the IBM's Websphere Studio of products? One thing is for sure. These products are based on EMF models.

EMF is the short for Eclipse Modeling Framework. It helps in developing models and then generating code for it. The model is described using yet another model called Ecore (which is again based on EMF). This model is platform independent. Yet another model called the Genmodel holds platform specific information that is used to generate code. The code generation can be controlled using something called Java Emitter Templates (JET for short).

The Ecore model can be developed using XML Schema, Rational Rose models, Annotated Java, Emfatic (from IBM) etc.

The beauty of EMF is it is free and can be used with Eclipse.

For those of you, who have read till here, but couldn't get a word of it, and still want to know more (because you feel it can help you someway and you feel my description was not good), refer to the standard EMF site.

Also this interview with Dave Steinberg is worth a read.

EclipseCon also has some resources for EMF.

(And ya, you can refer to this site here for various other resources on Eclipse)