[news.eclipse.platform.rcp] Re: databinding: jgoodies/swt vs. jface

[martin <mbayly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Peter,

I don't have a whole lot to add at this stage other than to say I'm in a 
similar situation.  Just starting out an Eclipse RCP project and have been 
looking at the binding options.  My concern with both of these solutions 
is that they are immature or in development.

jgoodies/swt has a big disclaimer that it's a 0.2 alpha release.  Also it's 
release cycle seems slow (1 year between 0.1 and 0.2) - but that may be an 
unfair judgement - having not really tried using it, I don't know whether 
there are things missing/broken that would warrant a faster release cycle. 
On the plus side, my assumption is that because it is based on jgoodies, 
that the jgoodies documentation (which is not too bad) may explain how to 
use it?

jface data binding is all internal in 3.2 and likely to change a lot? between 
now and 3.3 which is not out until next year, which leaves me with the dilemma 
of which version to develop against.  A big downside for me is also that 
the docs are not great at the moment on the 3.2 release.  It's okay to spend 
days trawling through test cases/bug reports if you're a one off developer, 
but if you have a team of 10-15 developers it would be better to have something 
a bit more substantial.

Generally, my preference would be to go with jface just because it's designed 
specifically with jface/swt in mind and seems like one less dependency to 
have to worry about.  However, we're developing a commercial app so you may 
not have similar concerns.

Are you looking at the 3.2 jface databinding or the 3.3 milestone builds? 
If you went with jface, would you develop against 3.2 or 3.3?

I would definitely be interested in hearing what your decision is
Cheers
Martin

> I'm evaluating  jgoodies/swt and jface data binding. Currently these
> are my impressions:
>
> - Both libraries are equally powerful. They are just doing things
> differently.
> - I like the basic construct in jface db: observable - binding -
> observable
>
> - jgoodies/swt db doesn't have a binding class. Binding is done
> in factory methods creating bound UI components.
> - jface db doesn't have a model. An arbitrary class can be made an
> observable model by implementing IObservable.
> - jface db is more versatile, jgoodies/swt db is more convenient.
>
> Can anybody comment on this list or add meaningful items to it? Thanks
> for your advice.
>
> Peter Maas, Aachen
> E-mail "cC5tYWFzQG1hZ21hc29mdC5kZQ==\n".decode("base64")