Configuring MyEclipse Blue Edition to Work With WebSphere 7 and RAD Projects

Here's how you can quickly get started by installing MyEclipse Blue
Edition, configuring WebSphere 7 to work with MyEclipse and then
pulling in RAD projects to work with...

Getting Started

First, we'll assume you've downloaded MyEclipse Blue Edition from
the MyEclipse downloads page. If you've never used MyEclipse
Blue Edition before, you'll be installing a fully-functional, 30-day trial.

On the product startup, you'll see the nice MyEclipse Blue splash
screen. You're already in business.

Just in case you're unfamiliar with the process, MyEclipse, like
Eclipse and other Eclipse-based tools such as RAD, stores your
project metadata in "workspaces." On startup, you'll be prompted to
select a workspace for MyEclipse Blue Edition to operate from. In
this case, the default "MyEclipse Blue" setting is fine.

You'll also be shown the MyEclipse dashboard, which allows you to
manage your MyEclipse plugins and updates. You can use this once
you're more comfortable, but we don't need it for this tutorial.
Just hit "Close."

Now you'll see the main MyEclipse Blue Edition Workbench.

There are lots of perspectives available to you, but for now we just
want to see how MyEclipse works with WebSphere and RAD, so let's get
going there first by configuring WebSphere 7 in the next section...

Configuring MyEclipse Blue and WebSphere

Hit the servers tab near the bottom of the workbench and right
click in the empty area, selecting "Configure."

Note: MyEclipse comes bundled with Derby and Tomcat, but we
don't need to worry about those right now.

Our server preferences page will pop up to allow you to easily
configure WebSphere 7. From the bottom of the menu, expand the
"WebSphere - Blue Connector" drop-down and select "WebSphere 7."

You'll then be asked to browse to your existing installation of
WebSphere 7, which you may have as a standalone installation or as
part of RSA or RAD. In this case, it's a standalone install in my E:
directory. Your location will be unique to your machine or working
group. Regardless, it will be the same location you currently
specify for your WebSphere deployment.

Once you have the directory selected, click on the "Add" button to
add the WebSphere instance.

Once you click "Add," the "Add Instance" wizard will appear,
requiring you to name your instance inside MyEclipse and locate your
WebSphere profiles. In this case, we'll name this instance "Blue"
and find the WebSphere profile in the file system.

In my case, the profile is called "AppSrv01." Hit "OK."

You'll see that the wizard has just populated the many required
fields of ports and nodes automatically. You only need to modify
these if you're making changes. Since we're just test-driving Blue,
we'll leave them as-is for now. Hit "Next."

We'll also have some arguments automatically applied for us. Again,
we'll just hit "Next" again to keep moving without changing
defaults.

Finally, hit "Finish," again with no changes. If you don't know about
configuring your classpaths, it's likely you don't need to. And, since
we're just exploring, there's no need to add anything advanced for the
moment.

Hit "Apply," then "OK."

WebSphere 7 will now appear in the Server tab we were in before,
along with Derby, Tomcat and any others you may have configured.

Right-click on WebSphere 7 and hit "Run Server."

If you're familiar with WebSphere, you likely have experienced the
sometimes-long startup times. Since we'll need it running later for
our sample project, we can just get it going now in the background
while we pull in our RAD projects. For that, we'll move into the
next section...

Working With RAD Projects

Our workspace is still currently empty, so we'll need to pull in a
RAD project for experimentation. To get started, click on File >
Import.

This is fairly self-explanitory. Select "Existing Projects into
Workspace" and hit "Next."

First, browse to select the root directory of your RAD projects.
This is the same location your RAD workspace would be pointed at.

In this case, my RAD workspace is located in with my other MyEclipse
and Eclipse workspaces; your path will be unique.

Now that you've found and selected your RAD projects, MyEclipse will
double-check that you want to pull in all aspects of the project.
Since we're keeping it simple, we will. You may also toggle a
checkbox to copy these projects into your current workspace so you
can have a "sandbox" to work in as you try MyEclipse Blue.
So, I selected "Copy projects into workspace" as well. Hit "Finish."

The projects will appear in your package explorer, which was
previously empty. But, you'll notice some small red error
indicators. NOT TO WORRY!

Let's right-click on the project and select "Properties" to see
what's wrong.

Hmmm... looks like my project has no installed capabilities.
"Capabilities" in MyEclipse are exactly like Facets in RAD or WTP.
Since we know this is a Struts project from RAD, we want MyEclipse
to see those facets as well, but don't worry, it's dead easy!

As you see, MyEclipse doesn't fully understand that this is a RAD
project yet, as it's unable to read the project metadata. We'll fix
it in the next step.

Just right-click on the project again and go to MyEclipse > Enhance
RAD Project to Work with MyEclipse.

Obviously, we're making the RAD project readable in Myeclipse with
this step.

IMPORTANT: MyEclipse does not change or compromise the RAD
project. It only adds some metadata to the project so MyEclipse can
understand it. Conversely, RAD does not understand the added data,
so if you pull the project back into RAD, it will ignore any MyEclipse
project data. You can still work on the project in RAD without consequence.

A wizard will magically appear, as wizards do, that will double-check
the projects you're pulling in and want to "Enhance" to work with
MyEclipse. Everything looks good here, so we'll hit "Next."

Now, we'll need to enter in our existing WebSphere installation
location. This is the same address you plugged in above when you
setup WebSphere 7 in MyEclipse.

But why do you need to specify the location again?

MyEclipse has read your project's metadata and discovered that your
project was configured to run against a specific runtime version of
WebSphere. The wizard is simply trying to reconstruct this running
environment for you in MyEclipse and that's why it's asking you for
this information.

Tip: if you don't have a local install of WebSphere to point
at, MyEclipse can try and resolve project requirements for you
using its internal J2EE and Java EE spec-compliant libraries. Just
select the second radio button that starts with "Fix Automatically
using..."

Since we're working with a local installation of WebSphere in this
example, we'll just identify the install location and hit "OK."

Just hit "Finish" and we're through with this handy-dandy wizard.

You'll see that the little error messages are gone from our projects
and MyEclipse now sees the data effectively.

But, just to be sure, let's right-click on our project and hit "Properties"
again. Yep, looks like it's an nicely-built project with multiple capabilities.
But most important, MyEclipse now knows what it's dealing with.

Now, it's time to run the project in our newly-configured WebSphere
7 instance that is up and running smoothly, thanks to our prior
handiwork. Just right-click on WebSphere 7 (from within the Server
tab) and hit "Add Deployment."

Select the project you want from the drop-down menu, and select any
preferences before clicking "Finish." We'll leave this in development
mode.

You'll see MyEclipse hard at work deploying your project.

You're done!

You've gotten WebSphere 7 up and running and imported and run your

RAD projects; all from within MyEclipse Blue Edition!

"But, wait," you may say.
"Can my co-workers still use RAD on the same projects I've
just imported and modified?" Absolutely.

MyEclipse Blue Edition is intended to be a 2-way street. You can
have a whole team working on a project with MyEclipse Blue, and
another team working on the same project with RAD.

We hope you enjoyed the tutorial and know you'll enjoy adding the
many capabilities of MyEclipse to your existing projects.

If you have further technical questions about Blue, please visit our
support forums.

For licensing and quotes, please contact
subscriptions@myeclipseide.com.