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!

Where is DTP being used these days?

As we start looking at what will go into DTP (Data Tools Platform) 1.9 for the Eclipse Indigo (June 2011) release, it struck me that we don't know that much about how DTP is being used currently. It's been a while since we "polled the studio audience" to see what was up...

And though we have a skeleton crew now helping us with bug fixes and new features, we'd love to have more folks pitch in to help - whether it's by writing articles or blog posts, reporting bugs, or offering to lend a hand with patches for existing issues or new functionality. However the help is offered, we'll probably consider it!

But we'd love it if you use DTP if you could take some time and please answer a few survey questions:

Click here to take survey

Your answers will help us figure out where our priorities lie for this next release and what we may or may not have help with from the community!

Thanks in advance and I'll write up another blog post with the results a month from now to share those details.

Hope you're having a great week!

--Fitz

(Image from Discovery Education Resources)

More EclipseCon 2010 Thoughts

Hi all...

I try to write up a summary each year I go to EclipseCon documenting what talks I went to, what I thought was interesting, etc.

I've done that here this year on a JBoss Wiki page: https://community.jboss.org/docs/DOC-15091

Ignore it if you don't find it useful, but I thought it was a great conference this year. :)

--Fitz

EclipseCon 2010 - Some thoughts

Hi all...

Yes, it's been a long while (again) since I had an opportunity to write here. But after such a great EclipseCon 2010 experience, I feel it would be a disservice to not talk about it. :)

After joining Red Hat in the middle of 2009, I entered the maelstrom of tooling development in the exciting, chaotic world of Red Hat and JBoss. Leaving Sybase was tough, but it was time to do something different after nearly 13 years at New Era and Sybase. But it was a shock to the system to go from the slow and steady of Sybase to the full speed ahead of Red Hat.

That said, I've had little time to spend on DTP at Eclipse. I feel bad about this. But I'm trying to help as much as I can, just like Brian and Hemant from IBM and Linda from Actuate. None of us can spend as much time as we might like on this great project.

So I went to EclipseCon 2010 with a bit of trepidation. How would DTP be received? We really don't have much to show in our Helios release beyond a few fixes here and there.

We had one talk for DTP this year - DTP in the Real World. I spoke about our improved RCP support in DTP and provided a plea for more community involvement. And Ruth Soliani, from the Eldorado Research Institute in Brazil, who spoke about how they used DTP in their MotoDev Development Studio product (with Motorola) to connect to a SQLite database on an Android device. Pretty darn cool stuff there and they were very kind to say nice things about the DTP team. :)

On the first night of the conference, we had a DTP Birds of a Feather (BoF) that was very encouraging. We met Ray and Chris from Ingres who will be helping us out from that side of the DBMS world where they can. We met Shenxue Zhou from Oracle, who we've been trying to help out as we can as well.

So the show of community support was awesome. At EclipseCon 2009, we had a very low attendance to DTP talks and nobody attended the BoF. This year we had 30-40 people attend the DTP talk and 3 people (beyond the DTP PMC) show up, plus one guy who was hoping DTP meant "Desktop Publishing" (Sorry about that!). We had great conversations with Ruth's team, the guys from Ingres, and Shengxoe from Oracle.

Now I'm actually hopeful DTP will survive. And that's a good thing!

A big thanks go to Oisin Hurley and Don Smith who put on a terrific conference this year. Every talk I went to had a good number of people attending and a few were standing room only (like Mik Kiersten's talk about Mylyn!). Not to mention the awesome keynotes and the giant moon robots that looked like something out of The Matrix. :)

Thanks to everyone who attended and especially the DTP community who's coming back to life!

--Fitz

Looking for DTP Hitchhikers...

Hi everyone...

Wow... It's been a while since I last wrote on this blog. I've been keeping busy at Red Hat since I hopped the fence back in June. :)

Unfortunately, with Sybase's reduction in DTP resources and a few other folks we've lost by attrition, we're suffering from a serious lack of help in the Connectivity and Enablement projects at the moment. Though Linda from Actuate helps out in Connectivity every now and then, it's pretty much just yours truly with occasional help from our friends at Codehoop. And my time these days is pretty minimal for DTP.

Talking with Brian Payton, our fearless leader these days in DTP, it came up that with the small core of folks involved it was like we were in a book "Hitchhiking Through Europe on Pennies a Day" - not getting too far, but when you do get picked up and make some progress on your journey it's often for a brief burst of speed and then you're out of the car on foot again.

So we're looking for a few hitchhikers to help us out.

I come to you, our friends in the DTP community and the broader Eclipse community, and ask for help. We're not asking for full time, devoted folks. We're asking that if you get some time and want to dig into DTP, we have lots of Bugzilla entries that could use some tender loving care.

If everyone who uses DTP would dig into one DTP bug every few months and provide a patch, I'm pretty sure our list of issues would decrease dramatically.

We already have a few mediums out there to communicate... We have the Eclipse DTP mailing lists and newsgroup (check out http://wiki.eclipse.org/DTP_New_Committer_Info to get the list of how to find those resources). And I just created a new IRC chat (#eclipse-dtp) on freenode that I'll be on any time I happen to be logged in. Maybe we can get the conversation going between other DTP community members and bring things back to life a bit!

Personally, I've been involved with DTP since 2006 and have really enjoyed working with everyone I've met. Who knows who you might meet? We can't offer fame or fortune for your contributions, but we can definitely offer our gratitude and most likely the gratitude of a grateful DTP community.

Who's interested in helping us out?

--Fitz

Greetings from the land of Red Hats!

Hi all...

It's been a while since I last posted anything on this blog, but I want to assure you it's not dead. Well, not quite anyway. My new position at Red Hat has been and will continue to be a challenge - a good one! But that means I have less time to spend on DTP topics...

I know I still owe (oh ye few who read these words) the remainder of the YouTube/DTP plug-in I promised way back in March with my EclipseCon 2009 talk. But I hope to get back to that sooner than later.

In the meantime, I wanted to congratulate Brian Payton from IBM for becoming the new DTP lead. He's a great guy who's kept a handle on the SQL Editor for quite a while now and I'm sure he'll do great for the rest of DTP too! I'll continue to help out where I can and be involved, but to a much smaller extent.

As such, if you see him around please welcome Brian P to his new position if you get a chance. I'm sure he'd be happy to hear from our community!

We're in the process of finishing up 1.7.1 for the end of September with the Galileo SR1 release train and will then see what we can do for Helios.

If you, our great community, have some extra cycles to help out, we'd love to have you join the party. Give us a holler on the mailing lists or newsgroups and let us know what you're thinking. The more the merrier!

Thanks a ton for your continued support of DTP and hopefully I'll get back on track with some new posts here before long. :)

--Fitz

DTPtv - Part 1 - Using YouTube APIs in Eclipse

Hey there...

So yes, I'm back to talking about DTPtv... (You can see my introduction to the series here.)

Image via Wikipedia

Now that we know generally what we want to do, we'll start by focusing on making the YouTube APIs usable in Eclipse and perform a simple test. Easy enough, right?

So the first thing I had to do was grab the YouTube jars from Google. I found those here. I grabbed the latest version of gdata-samples.java. The YouTube/Google APIs also have some dependencies, so I had to go out and grab imap.jar, mailapi.jar, pop3,jar, and smtp.jar. I was able to re-use a plug-in wrapper for javax.activation.jar from Orbit, which I'll talk about in a sec.

With all of the jars downloaded, I just had to create an Eclipse plug-in wrapper so they were available to other plug-ins. To do this is cake... Right-click in the Package Explorer, select New->Project, and in the list of Wizards select "Plug-in from existing JAR archives". Select your external jars (it will copy them into the plug-in wrapper). I named mine "com.google.gdata.youtube" and unchecked the "Unzip the JAR archives into the project" so it kept the jars as jars, not source code. Click Finish and watch the magic happen.

When it's done, I had to do one last thing to add a dependency. The Google APIs still depend on the javax.activation.jar...

Do you remember I mentioned the Orbit project? Well, you can read more about it here, but the idea is that it provides a repository for a number of third-party projects/resources that are shared across Eclipse. These have already gone through the IP process and are approved for our use. (Note however that even if a library is approved by the Foundation for use by all projects, project teams must still fill out a Contribution Questionnaire and notify the Foundation of their intentions to use a library). And there are quite a few of them. If you look at the latest build (from back in August 2008), you'll see 83 different packages available.

In this case, I just want javax.activation, so I locate it in the list, download it, and drop it in my Eclipse environment. Once the workbench picks it up, I can add it as a dependency in the MANIFEST.MF file for my wrapper plug-in.

Cool. So that pretty much wraps up my jar wrapper plug-in. Not too tough there.

So now what? Now that we have this plug-in, we can write a quick little application to do something with it.

I've gone ahead and created a simple class that does a very basic YouTube search...

package org.eclipse.datatools.sample.utube.sandbox;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.URL;

import com.google.gdata.client.youtube.YouTubeQuery;
import com.google.gdata.client.youtube.YouTubeService;
import com.google.gdata.data.youtube.VideoFeed;
import com.google.gdata.util.ServiceException;

public class UTubeUtils {

public static String TR_FEED_URL = "http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/standardfeeds/top_rated";//$NON-NLS-1$

/**
* Return a list of video entries back to the calling method
*/
public static VideoFeed getResults(String author, String title) throws IOException, ServiceException
{
  YouTubeService myService = new YouTubeService(
          "", //$NON-NLS-1$
          "");  //$NON-NLS-1$

  String VIDEO_FEED = TR_FEED_URL;
  YouTubeQuery query = new YouTubeQuery(new URL(VIDEO_FEED));

  //set the author
  if( (author != null) && author.length() > 0)
  {
      query.setAuthor(author);
  }
  //set the actual query string
  if((title != null) && title.length() > 0)
  {
      query.setFullTextQuery(title);
  }

  //choose most viewed as the ordering
  query.setOrderBy(YouTubeQuery.OrderBy.VIEW_COUNT);

  //get the video feed
  VideoFeed feed = myService.query(query,VideoFeed.class);
  return feed;
}
}

So all that this really does is get a list of the top rated videos currently at YouTube. Pretty straightforward.

You'll notice a couple of things about the code. You have to have a developer key (your own ID as a developer or one for a particular company) and a client ID (seems you can have many of these). This basically lets the Google & YouTube APIs know that you're legitimately asking for data and aren't some rogue hacker trying to cause trouble. You can get these two items here. Once you have them, you can just create new constants for them and just use the constants.

So if you swap your developer key and client ID into the above code, it should do a quick search. But how should we test it?

I like creating new plug-in projects with example menu actions. To do this is pretty easy... Right-click in the Package Explorer, select New->Project, and in the list of Wizards select "Plug-in Project". Name it and set the plug-in ID and other info, and on the "Templates" page in the wizard, select "Plug-in with a popup menu." By default it keys off an IFile, so you can get to it from the Navigator or Project Navigator in the workbench.

It goes off and creates the basic code and you can then use your new utility class pretty easily by changing the run() method in the action class to look something like this:

    public void run(IAction action) {
   try {
       VideoFeed feed = UTubeUtils.getResults(null, null);
       if (feed != null) {
           if (feed.getEntries() != null && feed.getEntries().size() > 0) {
               System.out.println("Found some videos...");
               Iterator<VideoEntry> iter = feed.getEntries().listIterator();
               while (iter.hasNext()) {
                   VideoEntry entry = iter.next();
                   System.out.println("Video Entry: " + entry.getTitle().getPlainText());
               }
           }
           // clean up
           feed = null;
       }
   } catch (ServiceException se) {
       se.printStackTrace();
   } catch (IOException ie) {
       ie.printStackTrace();
   }
}

When you run the workbench and right-click on your action in the Navigator, you should see something like this in your development workbench console view...

Success! We have a plug-in wrapper for our YouTube jars and their dependencies. And we've verified that we can use those APIs in an Eclipse environment.

Next we have to figure out how to hook up YouTube to DTP and show a video in the workbench. And after that we can fine tune our look and feel to make it easier for our users.

Maybe this was a bit longer to write up than I'd thought originally, but this part of the process only took me about half a day when I was creating this code the first time.

Questions? Comments? Drop me a note here and I'll be happy to get back to you.

Next time I'll write about hooking up YouTube and DTP and how I used the built-in Eclipse web browser UI component to show videos.

--Fitz

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DTP APis and How to Use a Transient Connection Profile

Hi there...

On the DTP newsgroup we had a question about using DTP APIs to create a new transient connection profile and then use that to execute some DDL...

It's pretty easy actually... The trick for the transient profile is knowing all the bits and pieces you have to have ahead of time, like the:

• provider ID, which is the connection profile type ID
  
• vendor and version, which relate to the vendor/version of the database you're connecting to
• and then the driver path. Note that you can also use a pre-defined driver and get the DriverInstance from the DriverManager, then retrieve various properties like the vendor, version, class name, and driver path from there
  

So you end up with something like this:

    private static String providerID = "org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.db.derby.embedded.connectionProfile"; //$NON-NLS-1$
   private static String vendor = "Derby"; //$NON-NLS-1$
   private static String version = "10.1"; //$NON-NLS-1$

   private static String jarList = "C:\\Derby10.1.3.1\\db-derby-10.1.3.1-bin\\lib\\derby.jar"; //$NON-NLS-1$
   private static String dbPath = "c:\\DerbyDatabases\\MyDB"; //$NON-NLS-1$
   private static String userName = ""; //$NON-NLS-1$
   private static String password = ""; //$NON-NLS-1$

   private static String driverClass = "org.apache.derby.jdbc.EmbeddedDriver"; //$NON-NLS-1$
   private static String driverURL = "jdbc:derby:" + dbPath + ";create=true"; //$NON-NLS-1$ //$NON-NLS-2$

   public static Properties generateTransientDerbyProperties() {
       Properties baseProperties = new Properties();
       baseProperties.setProperty( IDriverMgmtConstants.PROP_DEFN_JARLIST, jarList );
       baseProperties.setProperty(IJDBCConnectionProfileConstants.DRIVER_CLASS_PROP_ID, driverClass);
       baseProperties.setProperty(IJDBCConnectionProfileConstants.URL_PROP_ID, driverURL);
       baseProperties.setProperty(IJDBCConnectionProfileConstants.USERNAME_PROP_ID, userName);
       baseProperties.setProperty(IJDBCConnectionProfileConstants.PASSWORD_PROP_ID, password);
       baseProperties.setProperty(IJDBCConnectionProfileConstants.DATABASE_VENDOR_PROP_ID, vendor);
       baseProperties.setProperty(IJDBCConnectionProfileConstants.DATABASE_VERSION_PROP_ID, version);
       baseProperties.setProperty( IJDBCConnectionProfileConstants.SAVE_PASSWORD_PROP_ID, String.valueOf( true ) );
       return baseProperties;
   }

   public void createTransientDerbyProfile() throws Exception {
       ProfileManager pm = ProfileManager.getInstance();
      
       IConnectionProfile transientDerby = pm.createTransientProfile(providerID, generateTransientDerbyProperties());
       // do something with the profile
      
   }

And then once you have your transient profile, connect, get the Java connection object, and execute your DDL...

        IStatus status = transientDerby.connect();
       if (status.equals(IStatus.OK)) {
           // success
           java.sql.Connection conn = getJavaConnectionForProfile(transientDerby);
           if (conn != null) {
               try {
                   java.sql.Statement stmt = conn.createStatement();
                   java.sql.ResultSet results = stmt.executeQuery("<INSERT QUERY/DDL HERE>");
               } catch (java.sql.SQLException sqle) {
                   sqle.printStackTrace();
               }

           }
          
       } else {
           // failure :(
           if (status.getException() != null) {
               status.getException().printStackTrace();
           }
       }

So not too bad. Great question though! Hope this helps!

--Fitz

I Want My DTPtv...

Hi again...

So one of my presentations at EclipseCon 2009 was "DTPtv and Other Wacky Ideas."

Was this truly a wacky idea? Probably. Who would have thought to merge Eclipse, YouTube, and DTP in one go?

My goal was two-fold... First, I wanted to show that DTP can be used for something more than just databases. Far too often we're pidgeonholed as a provider of database tools. And though we do that, we do much more as well. Second, I wanted to do something out of the usual box, and YouTube is pretty dang far out of the box...

Basically I focused on three different things...

1. Make the YouTube APIs accessible and test them.
2. Create a YouTube Search connection profile in DTP so you could create and manage multiple searches in a variety of ways.
3. Create a viewer that would allow a user to take advantage of YouTube searches on the fly and see the results within the Eclipse IDE or in an RCP application.

Now why would you want to do this you might ask? Good question.

Image via CrunchBase

Let's say you write Eclipse RCP applications for a company with a healthy education department. They want to help out beginning users by recording tutorials and putting them up on YouTube. Not only will it help your users, but it works as a bit of helpful marketing for your sales staff. And now that they're doing this, they want a way to be able to take advantage of these YouTube videos right inside the application.

Maybe this isn't so far fetched after all?

In the next series of blog posts, I'll focus on the three steps I took to get this all working. I demoed working code at the conference and will clean it up a little, zip it up, and have it available on a file sharing site soon. I hope to also contribute it back to the Examples project at Eclipse, as it crosses project boundaries.

As always, please feel free to ask questions or make comments as I go through the process. Many of you will find this old hat, but I'm hoping someone can take advantage of the information. :)

Thanks!
--Fitz

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Creating the SQLite Connection Profile UI bits

Hi there!

So now we're almost to our first functional version of a SQLite connection profile in DTP. We have a driver-wrapper plug-in, a driver definition, an overridden catalog loader, and a connection profile with its associated connection and connection factory classes. What's next? Why, adding the UI so you can create the profile, of course!

With versions of DTP prior to Ganymede, this was a more difficult, but not horrible task. In Ganymede, we've reduced the amount of work to adding three extension points and writing four key classes in a org.eclipse.datatools.enablement.sqlite.ui plug-in (basically just extending these classes a tad, so little real work involved):

• A connection profile wizard extension that uses the org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.connectionProfile extension and uses the newWizard node so we can define our wizard
• A property page extension (org.eclipse.ui.propertyPages) to define a property page so we can edit our SQLite conneciton profile instances
• A driver UI contributor extension (org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.ui.driverUIContributor) to create a reusable UI component that gathers the information we need for our SQLite connections
• A connection profile wizard class that extends the org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.ui.wizards.ExtensibleNewConnectionProfileWizard class
• A connection profile wizard page that extends org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.ui.wizards.ExtensibleProfileDetailsWizardPage
• A connection profile property page that extends org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.ui.wizards.ExtensibleProfileDetailsPropertyPage
• And a driver UI component that is used on the wizard and property pages that implements org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.ui.wizards.IDriverUIContributor

It may look daunting, but really it boils down to a few extension points, a few extended classes, and an instance of poor man's inheritance (copying a class from another project).

So let's get started!

Creating an Actual SQLite Connection Profile (minus the UI)

Hi there!

So now we have the majority of our work done. We have a driver-wrapper plug-in, a driver definition, and an overridden catalog loader. What's next? Wrapping the functionality in a nice, easy to use connection profile!

Note: Previous articles in this series cover the following topics: Catalog Loaders, Driver Templates, and the Driver Framework.

Many moons ago, we talked at a high level about the driver template & driver definition frameworks. It's now time to talk briefly about the connection profile framework.

It all boils down to this... A connection profile manages a connection to something. Right now in DTP we connect to JDBC databases and file systems for the most part. But the Sybase WorkSpace product also uses DTP to connect to application servers, LDAP, UDDI repositories, and much more. So it's not limited in any way.

With that in mind, a JDBC database connection profile, such as the one we want to create for SQLite, just needs to manage a JDBC connection under the covers. We'll add a layer on top of that to attach the SQL Model to the connection so we can display the database specifics in the Data Source Explorer tree.

In the DTP Ganymede (1.6) release, we've really simplified creating a new connection profile if it's associated with a db definition vendor/version and a driver template. So we'll take advantage of that for SQLite.

To create a connection profile, we will go to the org.eclipse.datatools.enablement.sqlite plug-in project and create a couple of classes and two extension points. These steps are kind of chicken & egg - the order isn't really important so long as you get them all done.

Step 1: Create a new connection factory and connection class for SQLite. These are the actual raw connections that our SQLite connection profile will manage for us.

The connection class is pretty easy. We're just going to extend the Generic JDBC JDBCConnection class for SQLite so we have our own specialized version of it.

That code looks like this:

package org.eclipse.datatools.enablement.sqlite.connection;

import org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.IConnectionProfile;
import org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.db.generic.JDBCConnection;

public class SQLITEJDBCConnection extends JDBCConnection {

/**
* @param profile
* @param factoryClass
*/
public SQLITEJDBCConnection(IConnectionProfile profile,
                              Class factoryClass) {
super(profile, factoryClass);
}
}

The connection factory requires a little more work, but not much more:

package org.eclipse.datatools.enablement.sqlite.connection;

import org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.IConnection;
import org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.IConnectionProfile;
import org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.db.generic.JDBCConnectionFactory;

public class SQLITEJDBCConnectionFactory extends JDBCConnectionFactory {

public SQLITEJDBCConnectionFactory() {
super();
}

public IConnection createConnection(IConnectionProfile profile) {
SQLITEJDBCConnection connection = new SQLITEJDBCConnection(profile, getClass());
connection.open();
return connection;
}
}

Basically in the connection factory, we're just creating one of our new SQLiteJDBCConnection class instances for the profile that's passed in.

Step 2: We want to add a new extension point to the plugin.xml in the org.eclipse.datatools.enablement.sqlite plug-in project: org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.connectionProfile.
This extension point has a couple of nodes we're going to create beneath it: connectionFactory and connectionProfile.

Let's define our connectionProfile first, so we have the connection profile ID to use for the connectionFactory.



You can see from the screen that we're giving our connection profile the following properties:

• id = org.eclipse.datatools.enablement.sqlite.connectionProfile
• category = org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.db.category (this ensures that our connection profile shows up under the "Databases" category in the DSE)
• name = SQLite Connection Profile
• icon = icons/jdbc_16.gif (you can copy this from the Generic JDBC connection profile plug-in)
• pingFactory = org.eclipse.datatools.enablement.sqlite.connection.SQLITEJDBCConnectionFactory (our new connection factory class we created in step 1)

Then we define our connectionFactory:



Our connectionFactory extension has the following properties:

• id = java.sql.Connection (this maps to the type of connection this connection factory/connection class maps back to -- in this case, a JDBC connection)
• class = org.eclipse.datatools.enablement.sqlite.connection.SQLITEJDBCConnectionFactory (our connection factory class)
• profile = org.eclipse.datatools.enablement.sqlite.connectionProfile (our SQLite connection profile ID from the connectionProfile extension)
• name = SQLite Connection Factory

So now we have a connection profile for SQLite in DTP. Now all we need is a user interface (wizard, wizard page, property page, and driver UI) and we'll be golden!

That's what we'll cover next time.
--Fitz

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DTP SQLite support continued... on to Catalog Loaders...

Hi all...

Yes, it's been a while since I wrote the last article in this series. I apologize for that. This summer has been busy both at work and home (not like I got to go on a cruise like Ed Merks or anything, but we've been bouncing around!). So the series of articles fell by the wayside a bit.

That said... Let's get back to it. When we last left our intrepid coders, we were working through the steps of trying to get SQLite to connect and show its underlying model (schemas/tables/procedures, etc.) in the Data Source Explorer. We had just finished creating some driver templates (see that article here) and that didn't really buy us all that much.

The next step is to then create a custom catalog loader to take care of any shortcomings of the SQLite driver. We have a db definition (vendor/version) to hang the catalog loader from, which means we just have to choose which level to focus on first.

In this case, since we're interested in schemas as the highest level of the model for SQLite, we'll override the schema catalog loader.

To do this, we need to do a things.

1) In the plug-in manifest editor (opened either from MANIFEST.MF or plugin.xml) for the org.eclipse.datatools.enablement.sqlite plug-in project, we need to add a new dependency. Select the Dependencies tab in the manifest editor and add org.eclipse.connectivity.sqm.core. This will provide one of the extension points that we need to extend to override the catalog loader.

2) On the Extensions tab, add a new extension and select org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.sqm.core.catalog. Right-click on the extension and select "overrideLoader". Then select the "overrideLoader" node in the extension tree. You should see something like the following:


Product and version equate directly to the db definition that we've already created. Provider is the actual loader class we'll override the default with. And eclass is the SQL model class that we want to override the loader for our SQLite databases.

In this case:

* product = SQLITE
* version = 3.5.9
* eclass = org.eclipse.datatools.modelbase.sql.schema.Schema
* provider = a new class we'll create called SQLiteSchemaLoader


The SQLiteSchemaLoader looks something like this:

package org.eclipse.datatools.enablement.sqlite.loader;

import org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.sqm.core.rte.ICatalogObject;
import org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.sqm.loader.IConnectionFilterProvider;
import org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.sqm.loader.JDBCSchemaLoader;

public class SQLiteSchemaLoader extends JDBCSchemaLoader {

public SQLiteSchemaLoader(ICatalogObject catalogObject,
    IConnectionFilterProvider connectionFilterProvider) {

    super(catalogObject, connectionFilterProvider);

}
}

Since SQLite has no concept of a "schema", we need to dummy one up so that the model is satisfied. (Yes, this is one more case where the loose JDBC "standard" bites us in the rear when we try to adhere to it.) To do that, we really only need to focus on overriding a couple of key methods:

* protected void initialize(Schema schema, ResultSet rs) throws SQLException
* public void loadSchemas(List containmentList, Collection existingSchemas) throws SQLException

In the default JDBCSchemaLoader, it relies on the driver to provide a result set of schemas. In the SQLite case, since there are none, we need to change the behavior to just dummy up a schema object and pass it along.

So loadSchemas becomes:

public void loadSchemas(List containmentList, Collection existingSchemas)
throws SQLException {
Schema schema = (Schema) getAndRemoveSQLObject(existingSchemas,
        "DEFAULT");
if (schema == null) {
    schema = processRow(null);
    if (schema != null) {
        containmentList.add(schema);
    }
}
else {
    containmentList.add(schema);
    if (schema instanceof ICatalogObject) {
        ((ICatalogObject) schema).refresh();
    }
}
}

And initialize is changed to ignore the result set and just name the schema "DEFAULT":

protected void initialize(Schema schema, ResultSet rs) throws SQLException {
schema.setName("DEFAULT");
}

The last thing we have to do is make our catalog loader class actually run as an executable extension. If we don't add the following constructor, you get an InstantiationException, which is always a pain to track down:

public SQLiteSchemaLoader() {
super(null);
}

Once the dummy schema is in place, the driver actually does return the tables list correctly, as seen in the following screen shot.



However... It appears that the SQLite driver does not return getImportedKeys() directly (it throws a "not yet implemented" SQLException for me), so we will need to clean up the JDBCTableConstraintLoader before we're done, but we can do that during code cleanup. (We'll also have to remove some of the nodes that don't make sense for a SQLite database, such as Authorization IDs, Stored Procedures and User-defined Functions.)

So now we have a (mostly) working catalog loader that will connect to a SQLite database and allow us to drill in and see tables and columns.

In the next article we'll walk through the simplified process for creating a brand new connection profile (wizard, wizard page, property page, connection factory, and connection classes). And then we can talk about the clean up phases and some of the nice things we can do to help out our users and developers.

Hope that helps!

--Fitz

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

New DTP Ganymede Video at Eclipse Live

Hi all!

Just thought I'd let you know as part of the Ganymede release, Ian had most of the main projects create 15-20 minute videos to include on Eclipse Live to highlight what's new and cool in Ganymede.

Well, I'm happy to say that the DTP demo is live. :)

You can take a look at it here.

Please be gentle, as it's my first live demo video. :)

Thanks!
--Fitz

DTP T-shirts... Get your t-shirts here...

Hey all...

In honor of the Eclipse Ganymede release and DTP's 1.6 release, I put together a t-shirt design so you can share your DTP love with the world. It's not much, but it's colorful and after one revision yesterday (thanks Linda!) I think it includes a majority of DTP projects, components, and terms in a creative way.



Pick one up to share with your friends and coworkers. :)

Thanks to everyone involved with DTP's Ganymede release!

--Fitz

Eclipse Ganymede is Released Into the Wild! (Repost)

Hi all...

It should be common knowledge, but Eclipse Ganymede (also known as Eclipse 3.4) is being released today! As said by the Eclipse folks (thanks Ian for writing a great press release as always) - "The Ganymede Release is a coordinated release of 23 different Eclipse project teams and represents over 18 million lines of code." It's an enormous undertaking by a diverse group of people, projects, and companies, so kudos to everyone involved!

Along with Ganymede is the next major release of DTP (version 1.6). With this release, we add some new functionality and streamline some of what was already there...

One of the things that people have asked for over the last few releases has been a graphical SQL query editor. And it's finally there! Yay!



There is still a bunch of work left to do with it, but for a first release I think it works great. I'm not a big fan of hand-coding joins in SQL statements and this makes it VERY easy to do that. Just click and drag!

Beyond that, we did a ton of work on usability in DTP 1.6 also. We've streamlined the process for creating driver definitions and connection profiles to the point where it only takes a few clicks before you're connecting to and drilling into the Data Source Explorer to view your databases. So a big thank you goes out to Max at JBoss and the Zend folks and everyone else who provided valuable feedback during our prototyping and implementation of these changes.

It's been a heck of a year, but I think DTP is better and stronger than ever. We will get started shortly on our first maintenance release (1.6.1, due out in September) and planning for the next major Eclipse release (in June 2009).

As always, we depend on the community for support and guidance going forward. As you start to explore our Ganymede release, keep an eye to the future and let us know what you'd like to see us do by next June!

Thanks to everyone involved in the DTP 1.6 release -- from Sybase, Actuate, IBM, JBoss, Zend, Ingres, and all those who I can't remember at the moment. Everyone take a bow as the curtain drops on Ganymede, enjoy a brief rest, and then it'll be time to get going again!

--Fitz

How do you add your own custom driver template? (Repost)

Hi all...

Sorry there's been a bit of a lag between articles. We've been busy trying to get Ganymede out the door and start planning for the future (maintenance releases for 1.6 plus the next major release of DTP for next June). I need to ditch my crystal ball for a magic eight ball I think. :)

Anyway... This week we're going to chat about how to create a new custom driver template.

First of all, when would you want to do this? There are a few possibilities:

1. You're creating support for a new database type not currently covered by DTP Enablement.
2. You want to add support for a third-party driver (such as DataDirect or jTDS) for a currently supported database.
3. You simply want to add an alternative driver template to complement an existing driver that adds properties or changes default values for use in your application(s).

That said, let's pick #1. We can use it as an example to provide functionality through this article series and eventually add some new database support to DTP Enablement.

For this example, let's work on SQLite support.

You can find a ton of information about SQLite on the SQLite home page (http://www.sqlite.org/). And you can grab the SQLite JDBC driver from the SQLiteJDBC page (http://www.zentus.com/sqlitejdbc/). So we'll grab the SQLite binaries for Windows (in my case) and the sqlitejdbc-v051-bin.tgz for this case. (You'll need to put the sqlitejdbc.dll in your JRE's or SDK's JRE bin directory to get this working.)

Typically the process I work through when deciding whether or not we need a custom connection profile for a given database is as follows:

1. Can I create a new Generic JDBC driver definition that references the jar (sqlitejdbc-v051-native.jar in this case)? Yes.
2. Can I then create a new Generic JDBC connection profile that uses my driver definition from (1) to connect to the database? Yes.
3. Can I browse into the database to see schemas, tables, stored procedures, and the like? Unfortunately not in this case.

This means we need to go a step further and go through these stages:

• Stage 1: Create a new Database Definition for our Database
• Stage 2: Create a new Driver Template for our Database (and the associated UI)
• Stage 3: Create a new Connection Profile for our Database
• Stage 4: Create a Custom Catalog Loader for our Database

So let's start with Stage 1 and get Stage 2 started today...

For each database that is supported in DTP and presents its structure in the Data Source Explorer (DSE), we have to tell the base models what the database supports. This is represented by the Database Definition (or "DB Definition"). What data types does it handle? Does it handle aliases or triggers? What kinds of constraints?

The DB Definition file itself is simply an XMI file (an XML file that provides metadata for some other XML files). In this case, it maps back to an EMF model for the DB Definition.

I'm not going to go into the gory details here. But there's a good article on how to get started here (be sure to look at Scenario 2).

Basically we need to create an XMI file to tell DTP what basic properties this database adheres to. What data types does it support, does it have catalogs, and so on. Most of this information can be found in the database documentation.

To simplify the process a little, we have a sample Java file that can be customized to create a new XMI file. I've modified it somewhat to create the XMI file locally. And I'll post a zip with the necessary files on the DTP website so you can grab them at the end of this exercise.

Once that's created, you can create a plug-in wrapper called "org.eclipse.datatools.enablement.sqlite.dbdefinition". And in that plug-in wrapper we will use the org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.sqm.core.databaseDefinition extension point to tell DTP about it. Basically the databaseDefinition extension point just maps the XMI file to a named vendor and a named version. That's how the underlying systems will locate it. (You'll see the terms vendor and version appear later as we define our driver template as well.)

So now we have a DB Definition and a plug-in wrapper for it. Cool. Now we can move to the first part of Stage 2: Creating a driver template.

To create a new driver template, we'll start by creating another plug-in. This plug-in will house all the non-UI bits and pieces we want for our SQLite connection profile. We'll call it "org.eclipse.datatools.enablement.sqlite".

In the manifest for our new SQLite plug-in, we will create a new org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.driverExtension extension. This extension point is used to register driver template categories and driver templates within the DTP framework.

Remember how we were talking about vendor and version earlier? Well, now we're going to map some driver template categories to them.

First we'll create a "SQLite" category, which maps back to the vendor name we chose earlier and has org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.db.driverCategory as a parent. All database drivers fall under this category in DTP so we can easily find them. We'll call our new category "SQLite" and give it an ID "org.eclipse.datatools.enablement.sqlite.driver.category".

Next, we'll create a "3.5.9" category, to map to the version we selected earlier (3.5.9 is the most recent version of SQLite I could find). This one will use our "SQLite" category as its parent. We'll call it "3.5.9", and give it an ID "org.eclipse.datatools.enablement.sqlite.3_5_9.category"

Lastly we'll create the driver template itself. We'll give it the name "SQLite JDBC Driver" (not very original, but easy to remember) and an ID "org.eclipse.datatools.enablement.sqlite.3_5_9.driver". We'll set it to our SQLite 3.5.9 parent category so it has some context, setting it to the category ID we made a second ago "org.eclipse.datatools.enablement.sqlite.3_5_9.category".

We know it needs a driver jar, so we'll provide a default jar name as "sqlitejdbc-v051-native.jar". If we get fancy later, we can provide some mechanisms to pre-populate the path to the local version of that jar, but for now we'll assume the user will be able to know where their jar is located and set it appropriately in the driver definition. (Yes, we'll talk about the "fancier" way to do this automatically later.)

Beyond that, we need to get a few key bits of information about the driver. Based on the documentation for SQLite, it appears that we require the following property values:

• Driver Class: org.sqlite.JDBC
• JDBC URL: jdbc:sqlite:test.db

Easy enough, right? Well, we also require a few other things for a standard driver definition:

• Vendor: SQLite
• Version: 3.5.9
• Database name: TEST (we can extrapolate this from the sample URL)
• User ID: (not applicable, so we just leave it blank)

With these basic bits and pieces, we have defined our driver template! Whew. Took a bit of work though, I know.

That said, we now have reusable bits we can take into the next part of this process, which is creating a connection profile that can use our new driver definition and driver template.

At this point we're just laying the ground work. You can find a zip with the plug-ins created during this exercise here.

So next time we'll look at creating a basic connection profile that can actually use these bits!

--Fitz

The DTP Driver Framework (Repost)

Hi all...

In this article, we're going to cover an introduction to the DTP Driver Framework. What are Driver Templates/Driver Definitions? What do we do with them? Where does the UI fit in? Where does the properties provider fit in? Can I make a Driver Template into a hat? Where does the Database Definition fit in?

All of these questions and more will be answered by the end of the article, I hope.

So let's start with an easy one. What is a Driver Template? A Driver Template is a named collection of properties needed to define a usable Driver Definition.

A Driver Definition is a real instance of a Driver Template, with specific paths to driver jars or particular information to help users of that driver to create a Connection Profile that uses it.

We'll cover Connection Profiles in another article, but note that Driver Templates and Driver Definitions are optional for Connection Profiles. We use them for JDBC Connection Profiles because they provide an easy way to manage drivers and driver jars without duplicating that information in each Connection Profile instance.

Basically we have ([] = optional):

[Driver Template -> Driver Definition] -> Connection Profile

Each Driver Template can fall into one parent category, but categories can be split up in many ways. For example, we have a Database category, and then break that down by Vendor (IBM, Sybase, etc.) and Version (DB2 8.1, ASE 15, etc.). These categories provide groupings for Templates so we can refer to a parent category of Templates in particular controls used for Connection Profile creation/editing - like the DriverListCombo. You can give the DriverListCombo a category ID (like the one for Derby driver templates for example) and it will grab all of the Driver Definitions that use Driver Templates that fall under that category or any of its child categories.

(Brief sidebar... In Europa and before, we used to display Driver Definitions on the Driver Definitions preference page in a tree that followed this scheme... Databases -> Vendor -> Version -> Driver Definition, but now in Ganymede we arrange this differently so it's easier to sort by vendor or version or category to get at what you're looking for.)

Think of a Driver Template as a basic set of properties needed for a driver. Driver Templates require a unique ID, a name, and a parent category. Though jar lists are required for managing JDBC drivers, they're not mandatory for all Driver Templates, so you can specify if an empty jar list is ok. You can also provide a default name for Driver Definitions that use the Template as well as a class that can programmatically provide values for properties when Driver Definitions are created.

In addition, you can provide a list of other properties for the Driver Template. It's quite customizable. For JDBC templates, we require:

• Driver Class
• Vendor
• Version
• Database Name
• Connection URL
• User ID
• Password

As an example, the Derby Embedded JDBC Driver template for version 10.0 of Derby has the following basic properties:

• id = org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.db.derby.genericDriverTemplate
• name = %DERBY_EMBEDDED_DRIVER_TEMPLATE_NAME (which resolves to "Derby Embedded JDBC Driver")
• description = (but this may be used in the future in the Driver Definition UI as a tooltip)
• parentCategory = org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.db.derby.10_0.driverCategory, which is a child category of org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.db.derby.driverCategory, which is a child category of org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.db.driverCategory (so you can see the hierarchy - all Database drivers fall under "org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.db.driverCategory", and then Derby further defines it to a "Derby" category and then a category for "10.0" beneath that)
• jarList = derby.jar (multiple jars could be specified here, and this property can be further modified by the valuesProvider class)
• createDefault = false (indicates whether we should create a default Driver Definition for this template when a new workbench is created for the first time)
• emptyJarListIsOK = false (indicates that a jar list is required for this Derby 10.0 template)
• valuesProvider = org.eclipse.datatools.connectivity.apache.internal.derby.driver.DerbyDriverValuesProvider101 (this is a class that implements the IDriverValuesProvider interface and is used in the Derby case to see if one of two JDBC driver file plug-in wrappers exists in the workbench - if it does, it will create a Driver Definition by default, changing the jarList to have a valid path to the jar and setting createDefault to true)
• defaultDefinitionName = %DERBY_EMBEDDED_DRIVER_DEFAULT_INSTANCE_NAME (resolves to "Derby Embedded JDBC Driver 10.0" and is used if the valuesProvider finds the right plug-ins and creates a default Driver Definition)

Then when a Driver Definition is instantiated for that Driver Template, it uses the values from the Driver Template as defaults and allows the user to modify them. Think of this as a concrete instance of a template. Sort of like a Microsoft Word template used to create a Microsoft Word document. The template just suggests some defaults for the document, but the document is the actual file being modified.

So with our Derby example, we create an instance of the Derby Driver Template that takes those defaults and allows the user to modify the values to make the Driver Definition "valid". This means in effect that a) any jar files specified in the jar/zip files list are accessible and b) any required properties have values. We point to a concrete path for our derby.jar file, maybe modify the default JDBC url and user name for our basic installation, and we're on our way.

As we mentioned earlier, if the valuesProvider class finds an appropriate plug-in wrapper for the Derby driver, it will create the Driver Definition by default and the user won't have to modify it unless they need to tweak the defaults for their installation.

Once we have a Driver Definition defined for a given database type, we can then create a Connection Profile that uses the properties of the Driver Definition as defaults (jar list and driver class are shared between the Driver Definition and the Connection Profile), and we can specialize our Profile details further, perhaps adding some optional properties to the url, a unique port or database name/path, or providing a more specific user name/password combination.

Now... I mentioned in my introduction last week that you can do more with Driver Templates and Driver Definitions than just use them in database Connection Profiles.

What if you want to define some basic communication protocols for a particular Connection Profile to consume? For example, you might define an "e-mail" driver that doesn't have any jars, but defines the basic properties of an SMTP server vs. a POP3 server vs. some other e-mail server type. So you could have two or three Driver Definitions that get consumed by an e-mail Profile (nobody's written one yet, want to volunteer?) to access and display e-mail sitting on a server somewhere.

Or maybe you want to use DTP to help manage connections to application servers? There's a wide variety of those... JBoss or Tomcat or EAServer or any number of others... Why not come up with a common Connection Profile that consumes "application server" Driver Definitions to show... message queues or provide administration functionality to start/stop a server, or view the log for the server.

Perhaps you're playing with social networking sites and you want to come up with a common set of functionality across them... Would you be able to perhaps use OpenSocial with DTP to provide that functionality?

There are a ton of possibilities to explore.

Think of Driver Templates and Driver Definitions as helpers for Connection Profiles. They're not required, but they can provide a place to share common details among profiles so you don't have to duplicate it in a bunch of profiles. For example, what if you have a bunch of database Profiles that don't use the Driver Framework and you want to update your driver class/jar list for a new version of the JDBC driver? Depending on how you implemented it, your user might have to go into each and every Profile that references the old files/driver class and update them by hand. Or if you use the Driver Framework, you update it in one place and the very next time you connect, it gets picked up automatically by the Profile.

So what do you think? Can you think of places where it would be handy to use DTP's Connection Profile and Driver Frameworks to meet a need?

As always, holler if you have questions or think I'm making this stuff up as I go along. I value the input of the community. There's LOTS of room to explore to see where we can take the DTP frameworks and I'm happy to be along for the ride!

Next week we'll start talking about how to implement your own custom Driver Templates.

Until next time...

--Fitz

DTP Article Series Introduction (Reposted)

Hi all...

I am going to be writing about some of the cool things you can do with the Data Tools Project (DTP) and how you can set up your own connection profiles for a variety of purposes. My goal with this series of articles is to provide a baseline for more people to understand the DTP frameworks for connectivity so they may build on them or use them in any way they see that's useful.

DTP is more than databases. Anyone who's played with BIRT realizes that ODA, which is a part of DTP Connectivity, shows the potential for accessing a variety of data sources, from comma separated files and XML to the variety of databases we support today through the DTP Enablement project. Though SQL is cool, it's nice to have the ability to have a consistent interface to your data when you're working in Eclipse.

So I'm going to break this into a series of articles and try to post fairly regularly -- probably one a week or so -- to cover the various bits and pieces of the DTP Connectivity frameworks and how a developer could use these bits and pieces in their own tools.

We're going to cover Driver Templates and Driver Definitions first, which might seem a bit odd considering what I said just a couple of paragraphs ago about DTP being more than just databases. However, Sybase has used driver templates in a few ways beyond just for JDBC drivers. We used them to describe properties of a security specification that could then be expanded on by adopters and users for their own purposes. Templates can be anything you want them to be and we'll cover some possible uses of the driver framework in the first series of articles.

Once we've covered drivers, we'll start talking about catalog loaders. Unlike drivers, catalog loaders are definitely a database-specific thing at this point, leveraging the Database Definition and SQL Model from the DTP Model Base project to populate a rich EMF model with JDBC-related information about a particular database. This allows you to do a variety of cool things with the SQL model.

And lastly, but definitely not least, we'll then cover the connection profile framework. Here's another area, like the driver framework, where you're not limited to databases. A connection profile can connect to a JDBC database, a CSV file, an XML file, or whatever you'd like to browse. By integrating with the Platform's Common Navigator Framework, you can integrate with file systems or FTP providers, or application servers, or newsgroups if you want to make a newsgroup reader -- pretty much anything you can connect to and pull back information from, you can make a connection profile for.

So as you can see, there's a lot of functionality available in DTP. I'll do what I can to help write about the various aspects of DTP Connectivity that you may not have known about.

As always, if you have questions, post them in the comments, post them on the newsgroup, post them on the mailing list -- wherever it's convenient for you to do so. And we'll do our best to get them answered in a timely manner.

Thanks for your time! Next week we'll start talking about the Driver framework.

--Fitz

DTP Blog, Take 2...

Hi all...

You might have noticed some funky posts hogging the top spots on Planet Eclipse over the weekend. Sorry about that. The blogging software that Sybase is using isn't the greatest. Though it allowed me to schedule posts for the future, it didn't afford the same functionality to the RSS feeds, which messed everybody up. (Sorry Denis, Gunnar, and Ian).

However, after talking a bit with the folks handling the blogs, it was decided I should just create a separate blog in Wordpress or Blogger... Though I like Wordpress better (I use it for my personal blogs), it was having issues with getting a new free account created -- so here I am at Blogger!

Anyway... I feel bad about the switch, but hopefully this means you won't have to see my posts over and over and over again. I'm sure once is enough on Planet Eclipse for everybody. :)

I'm going to repost my articles so far on the Driver Framework, but promise I won't go any further than that.

Thanks for your patience!
--Fitz