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| Rich Client Platform - missing features for business applications [message #177276] |
Thu, 08 January 2004 12:20  |
Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: juergen.jwi_nospam.de
I am evaluating Eclipse Rich Client Platform as basis and framework to
develop business applications.
As far as I know, there are several features in RCP still missing:
o input widgets for special format data, that only accept well-formed data
(e.g. dates, creditcard numbers, area codes)
o controller objects to check data entered on forms (e.g. is there a
family name entered, is age > 18) and to automatically position the cursor
on a missing or wrong entry
o automatic filling of forms with business data objects and automatic
writing back of (only if changed) data
o connection with J2EE security framework: user login, disabling of
widgets and menue entries if (!isCallerInRole(String roleName))
o some kind of business workflow, i.e. user has to follow a given sequence
of forms
o automatical hiding of parts of form (e.g. grey out maiden name if male
is checked)
and several more I cannot think of now. ;-)
The other day I ran into an open source swing (ops ;-) business framework
called Atris:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/atrisframework
It looks quite interesting to me, but as it almost didn't leave any traces
on google groups, I don't think it is widely used.
Anyway, if you download its documentation, there is some excellent
documentation in PDFs and also in the API doc.
Here are some concepts of Atris that might be useful for Eclipse Rich
Client Platform, too:
Connection Service ("An application can support zero or more connection
services, each establishing a connection to one, two or three tier
client/server applications.")[Atris-Development.pdf, p13]
Providers. ("An Atris Provider is essentially a dynamic disconnected
result set of records based on a primary key (that can be null). Providers
also bind visual fields to data columns, ensuring that the two are
always kept in synchronization.") [Atris-Development.pdf, p14]
Client Side Proxy objects ("Each Client Side proxy relates to zero or more
(normally one) Server Side EJB component for 3-tier applications.")
[Atris-Development.pdf, p15]
Screen Binding ("Through the use of binding, Providers will
automatically display the value(s) within the result set
on")[Atris-Development.pdf, p18]
Panel Objects ("A Panel is a visual representation of a group of visual
object components, for example fields, drop down list boxes, trees, lists
etc. [..] Panels are bound to Atris Providers in order to refresh the
on-screen data.") [Atris-Development.pdf, p21]
On page 26 there is an interesting discussion on Data Validation.
Well, this might be some ideas for enhancing RCP, too. As I don't know RCP
too well, there might be lots of it already implemented in RCP.
Thanks for reading so far,
Juergen
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| Re: Rich Client Platform - missing features for business applications [message #177676 is a reply to message #177276] |
Fri, 09 January 2004 08:52  |
| Eclipse User |
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hey juergen,
i'm doing a similar project, got delivery next week. what i would have
really liked to see is support for remote resources in the resources
plugin...i think it's a pipe dream as it's not really of great concern to
the ide folk. i've implemented my own wrapper around the resources and a
naviagtor for viewing etc, which is ok, but i am one (fairly inexperiened)
programmer, compared to the (large) eclipse team.
as for your feature requests, these are all fairly easy to implement, mabye
you should check out the preference and property pages - i use property
pages for editing business objects. you could implement IPreferenceStore and
have this hooked into your business objects. these also have the ability to
automate validation for you. as for business workflow, isn't this what
wizards are for?
cam
"Juergen Weber" <juergen@jwi_nospam.de> wrote in message
news:btk3gh$2mr$1@eclipse.org...
> I am evaluating Eclipse Rich Client Platform as basis and framework to
> develop business applications.
>
> As far as I know, there are several features in RCP still missing:
>
> o input widgets for special format data, that only accept well-formed data
> (e.g. dates, creditcard numbers, area codes)
>
> o controller objects to check data entered on forms (e.g. is there a
> family name entered, is age > 18) and to automatically position the cursor
> on a missing or wrong entry
>
> o automatic filling of forms with business data objects and automatic
> writing back of (only if changed) data
>
> o connection with J2EE security framework: user login, disabling of
> widgets and menue entries if (!isCallerInRole(String roleName))
>
> o some kind of business workflow, i.e. user has to follow a given sequence
> of forms
>
> o automatical hiding of parts of form (e.g. grey out maiden name if male
> is checked)
>
> and several more I cannot think of now. ;-)
>
>
> The other day I ran into an open source swing (ops ;-) business framework
> called Atris:
>
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/atrisframework
>
> It looks quite interesting to me, but as it almost didn't leave any traces
> on google groups, I don't think it is widely used.
> Anyway, if you download its documentation, there is some excellent
> documentation in PDFs and also in the API doc.
>
> Here are some concepts of Atris that might be useful for Eclipse Rich
> Client Platform, too:
>
> Connection Service ("An application can support zero or more connection
> services, each establishing a connection to one, two or three tier
> client/server applications.")[Atris-Development.pdf, p13]
>
> Providers. ("An Atris Provider is essentially a dynamic disconnected
> result set of records based on a primary key (that can be null). Providers
> also
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| Re: Rich Client Platform - missing features for business applications [message #177757 is a reply to message #177676] |
Fri, 09 January 2004 10:45 |
| Eclipse User |
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Originally posted by: juergen.jwi_nospam.de
Hi Cameron,
I had a look at the org.eclipse.jface.preference package,
it is indeed a neat idea to display business data as preferences. I'll
have to examine it further. I haven't read a lot about jface, but I should
certainly do it.
Of course there are no Editors for business data, yet, but using
IntegerFieldEditor as example it should be not too difficult.
> really liked to see is support for remote resources in the resources
I'm not sure if this is really a problem, because you should transfer your
business objects in form of data transfer objects (DTOs) to the client
first and then have them edited by a properties editor. Editing remote
objects directly is equivalent to calling fine grained remote methods.
This and DTOs are discussed in
http://www.theserverside.com/books/EJBDesignPatterns/index.j sp
Thanks very much for your input,
Juergen
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