RE: [wtp-dev] Meeting to discuss Project Facet UI integration

["Ted Bashor" <tbashor@xxxxxxx>]

Wanted to write something up that we could talk to at this meeting.  If you can't attend and have opinions about what the New [EAR|Web|EJB|etc] Project wizards should look like, feel free to send mail to the list or me directly.

- Ted
tbashor@xxxxxxx


Background:

The facet framework provides a powerful extensibility mechanism to WTP projects. WTP 1.0 includes a facet selection UI that allows zero or more wizard pages to be associated with each facet version. Although many facets will require no user input, because facets can represent fine-grained functionality, we anticipate WTP-based products will have quite a few facets per "project type" and thus the WTP project wizards may end up with several sparsely populated wizard steps.

Post-1.0, we would like to explore ways the WTP facet selection framework could support consolidation of facet configuration pages. For 1.0 we simply want the WTP project wizards to find a balance between making default project creation relatively quick and easy, while still exposing detailed facet selection and configuration.

It should be noted that the creation/modification of facet-based projects does not require use of WTP's facet selection/configuration wizard framework. Various customized wizards can take responsibility for creating valid facet configuration objects and pass them into the facet management api.

General principals for the WTP 1.0 project wizards:
* User should be able to create a default project after filling out a single wizard page
* Configuration options presented on the first page should be limited to those settings the user is most likely to want to override
* Configuration options on the first page should be facet version independent
* In general, Wizard pages should remember user choices between runs of the wizard

Recommendations:
1) We don't need the "Advanced" button anymore. Detailed project configuration is available via the facet configuration pages following the first wizard page.
2) First page:  project name and location
3) First page:  option to "Add to EAR"
4) First page:  option to select a Runtime instance
   * Note that for a web project, selection of a runtime will be required for the Finish button to enable. If a user does NOT select a runtime on the first panel, then he will be required to continue through to the facet pages in order to set up classpath for the servlet api jar(s). Is there a similar requirement for setting up ejb classpath?
5) Second page:  UI for selecting facets and their versions.  Facet list is constrained by the "fixed facets" specified by the wizard.
6) Second page:  UI for selecting a runtime.  Facet list can be filtered by runtime selection.  If user has selected a runtime on the first page, his selection will be preselected on the second page, but may be changed.
7) Panels 3 and beyond:  any pages needed for configuring selected facets

Open issues:
1) Currently we haven't implemented a facet wizard page for configuring java options, e.g. the java source directory(ies) for the project. Should the default java directory name be configurable on the first page?  Should we have a java facet page?
2) Under the "Add to EAR" checkbox, I think it would be useful to let the user to select EAR context dependencies, e.g. if this is a web project that is part of an EAR, you can select dependency on an EJB or utility project in the EAR. It's debatable whether this belongs on the first page of the wizard, but I'd argue it's one of the most common WTP workspace configuration options that our users could use help with in the wizards.



-----Original Message-----
From: wtp-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:wtp-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Kathy Chan
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2005 2:45 PM
To: wtp-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [wtp-dev] Meeting to discuss Project Facet UI integration 



Hi, 

As suggested in today's Project Facet integration meeting, we'll be having a seperate meeting this Wednesday to discuss how we could best integrate project facet UI into the existing project creation UI and where it would make sense to have new UI for WTP 1.0.   

Here's the meeting detail: 

Date:                        10/26 
Time:                        12-2 EDT (9-11 PDT) 
Conference ID:                9976929 
Toronto Dial-in:                416-343-2604 
Toll-free Dial-in:                1-866-576-2504 
Global Toll-free Dial-in:        800-4444-3030 
Information:                1-800-667-3678 

Regards, 

Kathy Chan
Rational Java Web Services, IBM Toronto Lab
D3-354, D3/R8V/8200/MKM, 8200 Warden Avenue, Markham, Ontario, Canada, L6G 1C7
kathy@xxxxxxxxxx, (905) 413-3022, tieline: 969-6038, fax: (905) 413-4920