Eclipse

Agile Java™ Development With Spring, Hibernate and Eclipse is a book about robust technologies and effective methods which help bring simplicity back into the world of enterprise Java development. The three key technologies covered in this book, the Spring Framework, Hibernate and Eclipse, help reduce the complexity of enterprise Java development significantly. Furthermore, these technologies enable plain old Java objects (POJOs) to be deployed in light-weight containers versus heavy-handed remote objects that require heavy EJB containers. This book also extensively covers technologies such as Ant, JUnit, JSP tag libraries and touches upon other areas such as such logging, GUI based debugging, monitoring using JMX, job scheduling, emailing, and more. Also, Extreme Programming (XP), Agile Model Driven Development (AMDD) and refactoring are methods that can expedite the software development projects by reducing the amount of up front requirements and design; hence these methods are embedded throughout the book but with just enough details and examples to not sidetrack the focus of this book. In addition, this book contains well separated, subjective material (opinion sidebars), comic illustrations, tips and tricks, all of which provide real-world and practical perspectives on relevant topics. Last but not least, this book demonstrates the complete lifecycle by building and following a sample application, chapter-by-chapter, starting from conceptualization to production using the technology and processes covered in this book. In summary, by using the technologies and methods covered in this book, the reader will be able to effectively develop enterprise-class Java applications, in an agile manner!

The open source Eclipse has proven to be a best-of-class, extensible application development framework. Out of the zip file, Eclipse offers many tools for developing Java applications including wizards, unit testing, debuggers, and editors. However, these tools do not support the development of enterprise applications.

Up until this point, an enterprise developer using Eclipse had to spend a large amount of time locating and evaluating plug-ins to build a suite of enterprise tools. The Eclipse Web Tools project has changed that by providing a comprehensive tools kit for developing enterprise applications called the J2EE Standard Tools (JST). JST along with WST (Web Standard Tools) will make Eclipse a much more complete application development framework for Java developers.

Pro Eclipse JST will cover these J2EE Standard Tools in detail. It's essentially a wide range of plug-ins for developing and integrating Servlets, JSPs, EJBs, and more that most other enterprise Java developers use on a daily basis into the Eclipse framework and IDE for use and professional practice.

Eclipse is a new open-source, Java-based, extensible development platform designed for nothing in particular but everything in general. Because of its roots, it is currently most popular as a Java integrated development environment (IDE). Eclipse ships with plugins for writing and debugging Java code. Additional plugins for more advanced Java development, such as JSP/servlets, are available from third parties.

This book provides a thorough guide to using Eclipse features and plugins effectively in the context of real-world Java development. Realistic examples demonstrate how to use Eclipse effectively to build, test and debug applications using the tools provided by Eclipse and other third-party open source plugins. The reader will learn how to use plugin tools for using Eclipse in a team environment, including using Ant for more sophisticated build processes and CVS for source control. Plugin-ins for building web applications, using J2EE technologies, such as JSP/Servlets and EJB, are also discussed.

Complementing this coverage of Eclipse in the context of development is a reference providing a comprehensive guide to Eclipse. Because Eclipse and its plugins provide a remarkable array of features, it is often hard to learn what features are available and how they can be invoked. This reference lays things out clearly: feature-by-feature, menu-by-menu.

What's inside:
* Getting started with the Eclipse Workbench: Perspectives, views and editors
* Working effectively with the Eclipse JDT
* Adding unit tests with JUnit, logging with log4j
* Team development with Ant and CVS
* Plugins for J2EE including the Sysdeo Tomcat plugin
* Developing Eclipse plugins
* Comprehensive Eclipse reference

Eclipse Kick Start focuses on the practical uses of Eclipse, particularly creating plug-ins, tools that extend the Eclipse platform with added functionality developers need to build best-of-breed Java applications. Starting with an overview of the IDE's features and interface, the authors include examples of building applications, testing, sharing code, and more. They then discuss the variety of pre-written plug-ins that developers can use to build Web services, develop Struts applications, create UML diagrams, and develop Aspect-oriented programs, all within Eclipse. Later chapters cover the plug-in architecture and building new plug-ins for implementing new functions and adding help to applications.

EMF is a powerful framework and code generation facility for building Java applications based on simple model definitions. Designed to make modeling practical and useful to the mainstream Java programmer, EMF unifies three important technologies: Java, XML, and UML. Models can either be defined using a UML modeling tool, an XML Schema, or by specifying simple annotations on Java interfaces whereby programmers write the abstract interfaces (a small subset of what they would normally need to write), and the rest is generated automatically and merged back into their existing code. This book thoroughly describes EMF and shows how EMF-based modeling is a foundation for fine-grained interoperability and data sharing among tools and applications. The authors provide a basic overview of the most important concepts in EMF and modeling as well as clear explanations with step-by-step instructions for defining EMF models. This book shows how the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) has successfully bridged the gap between modelers and Java programmers. It serves as a gentle introduction to modeling for Java programmers and at the same time as a reinforcement of the modeler's theory that plenty of Java coding can be automated, given an appropriate tool.

"I had a question about how to use a new Eclipse 3.0 feature, job scheduling, so I thought I would try out this book. I immediately found the answer with a concise explanation. Cool!"

--Erich Gamma

Official Eclipse 3.0 FAQs is the convenient source for answers to your most crucial questions about writing Eclipse plug-ins. Whether you're creating simple extensions for personal use or commercial Eclipse-based applications, you'll find hundreds of concise solutions here--including many that aren't answered anywhere else.

John Arthorne and Chris Laffra have worked with Eclipse technology since the very beginning; both are active members of the Eclipse development community and frequently answer questions on Eclipse newsgroups and mailing lists. Here, they cover an extraordinary range of topics, from workspace management to documentation, SWT to JFace, JDT to natural language support. Many FAQs include code samples and references to other information, making the book an invaluable desk reference for anyone working with Eclipse.

Just a few of the 350+ questions answered here...

How do I upgrade Eclipse? Page 29 What is new in Eclipse 3.0? Page 34 How can I add my views and actions to an existing perspective? Page 187 How do I set up a Java project to share in a repository? Page 58 How do I declare my own extension point? Page 74 How do I display a Web page in SWT? Page 141 How do I support multiple natural languages in my plug-in messages? Page 253 How do I save settings for a dialog or wizard? Page 166 How do I provide syntax coloring in an editor? Page 269 How do I hook into global actions, such as Copy and Delete? Page 225 How do I create a Rich Client application? Page 241 What is the purpose of activities? Page 229 How do I create and examine an AST? Page 369 The accompanying CD-ROM includes a hyperlinked, searchable version of the book in the form of an Eclipse plug-in; PDF versions of online Help and special Eclipse articles; examples from the book; and Eclipse 3.0.

This book encourages tool building by laying bare the design of an excellent tool platform, Eclipse, and encourages design by building a typical tool extending Eclipse. This tutorial on creating custom tools also provides an explanation of a highly effective software design philosophy. The authors revive the lost art of supporting existing work by building tools. This book improves the software developers skill set by building little tools, and gradually growing those tools into better-than-professional quality products to help a whole community of developers. This book revives that highly-effective practice of tool writing and provides lessons along the way that tool building and design are two of the most leveraged skills for software developers.

Written for novice programmers who need to learn Eclipse, the new integrated, open-source development environment, this book covers three areas that are of crucial interest—Eclipse, IBM’s Software Widget Toolkit (the SWT), and JDBC. Questions such as how to use the new Eclipse Integrated Development Environment; how to create a complete functioning application with Eclipse; and where to get the software, how to install it, and how to configure it are answered. Options that programmers would use in a real production to be instantly productive in Eclipse and the steps needed to take to create a program or modifying an existing program are addressed.

Eclipse, a platform for building applications, was originally aimed at Web application and image manipulation. With the release of Eclipse 3.0 there has been a shift to the use of Eclipse as a Rich Client Platform (RCP). In other words, using Eclipse as a base for everyday generic applications from media players to productivity and desktop applications. Thinking of Eclipse as not just an IDE but a platform for all application building is an evolution for the platform and significantly extends its reach to developers. In this book the designers of Eclipse as an RCP introduces the reader to the RCP concept and walks them through a set of scenarios and examples using Eclipse to solve real world, application problems. This will appeal to all developers who want to develop and deploy world-class applications with rich, native GUIs. Development areas that are already using Eclipse RCP include bio-medical, embedded technology (handhelds, etc), enterprise and productivity applications and banking.