Final DTP Survey Results October 2010

We had eight people total complete the survey (a big thank you to all of you), which was more than I was expecting honestly. With as quiet as things have been in DTP lately, I was expecting the sound of crickets to be prevalent. :)

However... As promised, here are the final survey results...

Question 1: Where do you use DTP?

a) Standalone in Eclipse for the database functionality (green)

b) Within WTP or Dali (JPA) (red)

c) Within a commercial product from IBM, Oracle, Sybase, or other company (yellow)

d) Other (please specify) (blue)

As I said in my last post, this was a bit surprising to me. I had no idea that this many folks actually used DTP for its standalone database functionality rather than as part of a larger suite.

The responses to "Other" included:

• As part of our tool. For reading database meta data and for parsing SQL (planned).
• BIRT

I'm not sure how I forgot BIRT - it wasn't deliberate. But it's nice to confirm that DTP is in fact being used in a few different contexts.

2. How do you use DTP?

a. As a user

b. As a developer

Definitely more use of the DTP toolset for developers than users, but it's nice to see users represented in there as well.

Question 3: Where would you like to see DTP used?

This was an open-ended question and we ended up with three replies:

• As a replacement for SQuirreL SQL inside Eclipse.
• As more integrated with the IDE
• Or as a standalone RCP SQL Tool like PL/SQL Developer

Question 4: What functionality would you like to see in DTP? Or what changes would you like to see?

This was another open-ended question with more responses:

• Provide documentation about what is supported for each database... e.g. "how do I see an SQL query explain for Sybase ASE or DB2 UDB"?. After hours of experimenting I *think* its not possible but can't tell for sure.
• Offer the ability to specify an order when executing a batch of sql files
• ETL functionality - data extract and load
• Easier handling - see PL/SQL Developer! More DB-Status functions
• Improve the SQL parser as a standalone library

Each of these will probably find their way into Bugzilla as feature requests. And though not all will likely get done, it's good fodder for discussions going forward.

Question 5. Would you like to help with DTP?

There were only three responses - yes, no, and other. The other described itself as "willing to report bugs and test cases", which is great. "No" isn't helpful, but is understood due to a lack of time or resources. And "Yes" is what we always like to hear!

All in all, I'm pleased with the results. We received some constructive feedback in addition to simply discovering that our community still has a heartbeat. :)

As I said last time... If *YOU* have more suggestions for us, feel free to join the mailing list (dtp-dev@eclipse.org) or put a message on the forum/newsgroup and let us know what you're thinking. As always, we're looking for help - whether it's testing and reporting bugs, contributing patches, or becoming a committer!

Thanks again to everyone who filled out the survey. It helps to know what you are thinking!

Have a great Halloween and a wonderful weekend!

How are YOU using DTP?

Hi all!

Now that the Ganymede release has gone out the door, DTP 1.6 has been released into the wild.

We in the DTP project would like to know how you are using DTP -- either as an end user, an adopter, or an extender. Are you using it to help with day to day database development tasks? Are you integrating with it from different projects in Eclipse such as BIRT, WTP, or JPA?

Though we're working on our first maintenance release for September, we're also starting to plan our next major release due in June 2009 along with the rest of the Eclipse Release Train. So we want to know what you would like to see in the next major release.

What do you like? What don't you like? We're here to help our community grow and develop. But to help us do that, we need guidance from the very folks who are using our stuff or looking at using it.

Let us know! Either by leaving a comment on this blog entry or by posting a message to the DTP newsgroup or mailing list!

Thanks!
--Fitz