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[bpel-dev] Simplify expression editors?

Hi Bob, all,

Le 10/05/2012 14:53, Bob Brodt a écrit :
It looks like the expression editor needs to be rewritten, so if you have time to work on this, I'd sure appreciate it :)

I have started to work on it.
First, I must say I am not very optimistic about our chances to reimplement it before Juno's release. Right now, what is in Juno M7 will throw an exception at runtime.
And second, I am thinking about the interest of such a feature.

The embedded editors allow to embed a text editor in any composite. There is an extension-point for that, so that people can plug editors. We also have an extension-point for expression editors. Expression editors are created through embedded editors.

Technically, this is cool. You have freedom of choice in your expression language, extensibility (although it all works with non-API code, which is the reason why the Juno build is broken). But is it really used or useful? Could not we only propose the XPath editor for expressions? I agree, that would restrain a part of freedom, but that would be straight-forward for users. And that would simplify a lot of code too.

As a reminder, the code we are working on had been written before Eclipse 3.0 was released. And I am not sure the feature itself, this extensibility, is used by anyone. What I suggest is quite radical. We remove the extension points for the embedded editors and the expression editors. And we only reference the XPath editor. What will be extensible are the XPath functions that you can use in your BPEL. That's all. And if people complain about the removal of the extension-points, we will see then if it is possible to bring them back.

Once again, we try to remain compatible with Helios, Indigo and Juno.
One thing that could be done too, is that the extensibility could be an extra-plug-in for Helios and Indigo, but not shipped by default within Eclipse. We have an extension-point. If we find it, we use it. Otherwise, we only use the XPath editor. This is more complicated than simply removing it.

What do you think?

            Vincent.

--
Vincent Zurczak

RCP Developer & ESB Consultant
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My Blog: http://vzurczak.wordpress.com
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