Ian,
I do
not believe this paper in its current form does much to clarify what RT is
or how to get started with it. The scope touches too many technologies
trying to tie them together without any real explanation in many cases. From an
EclipseLink perspective there are no concrete usage examples illustrating to
readers not familiar with the project what it does and how they might use
it.
Some
suggestions:
1.
Reduce the quantity of Eclipse projects/technologies in this paper so that more
specific usage can be explained.
2.
Avoid vague statements that do little to explain what the technologies are or
how they are used together:
- SOA: - "The
platform nature of EclipseRT means that
SOAs built on Swordfish can also use other EclipseRT components such as
EclipseLink and BIRT for the usual
enterprise application needs.
3. The
SOA Swordfish section is interesting but something I would consider leaving out.
If the SOA angle is to remain we should highlight how some other projects can be
used in this space independently of Swordfish as well as with Swordfish. As one
example EclipseLink SDO offers the reference implementation of Service Data
Objects allowing services to easily pass structured data between them crossing
service and programming language boundaries. This infrastructure is leveraged
with the Swordfish project but could be used in any SOA development efforts as I
am sure other common technologies in the covered projects could be.
4.
Some statements that I am not sure I understand:
- At the end of the Platforms section there is the statement -
"The management services available in EclipseRT, such as p2,
EclipseLink, and Swordfish gives IT the ability to deploy and then maintain
applications built on the platform." I am
unsure what is being implied here about available management services of these
projects
- In the web
Applications sections - "And, of course, Jetty is tightly integrated with the rest of EclipseRT,
such as the Eclipse Rich Ajax Platform, EclipseLink and
Equinox.". Is this true? I believe Jetty can run as
bundles on top of Equinox but I am unsure of the other tight integrations and
the statement could be misinterpreted to indicate required
dependencies.
5.
Adding EclipseLink specific usage context. I believe the common infrastructure
projects that span Desktop, Web, SOA, Enterprise, ... usage may need to be given
more contextual usage and explanation so that they do not stick out as just name
droppings in the paper. BIRT, ECF, EclipseLink, can be used in all of these
architectures which makes it tough to explain what it is and how a customer can
use it. I would recommend calling out a common infrastructure section where some
of these can be highlighted.
To
give EclipseLink some coverage where a reader could better understand what it is
and when they may want to consider using it I would
highlight:
- EclipseLink provides developers with a set of persistence services
allowing them to access their application's required data in many sources and
formats using a mapping approach based on common persistence
standards.
- EclipseLink JPA provides support for mapping their application's
domain using either Java Objects or EMF models to relational data
stores.
- EclipseLink MOXy provides a flexible mapping solution for easily
incorporating XML into your application development simplifying
service interaction using XML payloads, XML storage solutions, and future
proofing you application handling multiple XML schemas and
versions.
- EclipseLink SDO provides the industry standard for handling Service
Data Object manipulation in Java. This allows services (SOA) to more easily
manage dynamic data structures without requiring coupling to the service
implementation.
- In
addition to providing these persistence services which can be individually
used EclipseLink provides support for easily combining them together to
address more complex persistence requirements. Examples include shared
domain models being stored to multiple data sources and marshaled with
multiple XML representations as well as integrated SOA data transport with
relational storage as illustrated in Swordfish's uses of EclipseLink SDO
with JPA.
I hope
this helps,
Doug
All,
Attached is the second draft of the EclipseRT white
paper. As a reminder, this is suppose to provide a very high level
overview of what EclipseRT can enable. We plan to post it on the
EclipseRT web site (which is being revamped and I hope to get you a link
in the next couple of days).
NOTE: Apologies to Scott Lewis I have not incorporated
your description of ECF for SOA. I am having computer challenges
this week but I will include it soon.
Please provide feedback before the end of this
week. My goal is that this will be finalized next week.
Thanks
Ian
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