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So, with 3.0 the official stable branch of Eclipse and the Webtools project seemingly underway (finally) what’s the overall roadmap looking like for MyEclipse ? Any grand visions of the long term future ? Any short term announcements (aside from the fact that a new 3.8 beta is due shortly, and that development on ME 2.X will cease after 2.8) ?
I love it when there’s a pause between a question and a reply in these ME forums.. it’s atypical and usually means the answer’s going to be thought out…
it’s atypical and usually means the answer’s going to be thought out..
Ivar, I think the majority of our replies are both rapid *and* well thought out, personally. 😉
I know someone is drafting a reply to this very good question, so hang in there.
@support-scott wrote:
Ivar, I think the majority of our replies are both rapid *and* well thought out, personally. 😉
true, true.. I meant no disrespect to the ME customer support team.. I was buffering my (possibly rude) insatiable demands to know what ME’s plans are. Last time users started asking these types of questions there was quite a lengthy and detailed response…
Ivar,
We have not ignored your question, only that completing MyEclipse 3.8 has taken a much larger chunk of our time, attention, and resources. 3.8 Beta-1 gave our customers a taste of upcoming RAD capabilities with prototype struts modeler, Visual HTML development and JSF configuration editor. Beta-2 and final release will add Visual JSP development, database explorer with included SQL editor, Hibernate support and a much improved Struts modeler plus the customary bug fixes.
There are some obvious next steps as you can imagine, some uncertainty when factoring webtools and Pollinate, and the customary “when will MyEclipse support UML!”question.
Let’s talk about the obvious things first. We have been running so fast and too long that we may have just run past ourselves. MyEclipse can benefit from some spit and polish on many fronts including:
1. JSP 2.0 and J2EE 1.4 support. This is a high priority area that we have been addressing piecemeal and it is time to step back and give it the attention it deserves. The Webtools project has the potential to help and we will leverage whatever makes sense without compromising speed or development productivity.
2. Flexible project support. 3.8 Beta-1 provided dependent project support. A good start, but doesn’t fully address our user needs.
3. WYSIWYG visual designer extension for Struts and JSF development. This is a natural next step once full Visual JSP support is in place.
4. Java Server Faces Modeler. The Struts Modeler has already laid the foundation and provided much of the patterns needed for a full visual JSF designer / modeler. The rest is just a lot of back breaking gut wrenching work – nothing a few sleepless nights won’t solve.
5. Improved database, Hibernate support and overall ORM support. Granted, using these new capabilities will generate its share of bug fixes and enhancement, but integrating backend functions into front end visual design work will make any developer grin from ear to ear.
6. A growing list of enhancements and feature requests. This list alone has the potential to keep us busy for a couple of releases.
7. Tying all of this into a seamless process should be a lot of fun.
Not so obvious:
1. Web tools scope and overall impact. Some have asked if we perceive Webtools as a risk for MyEclipse. To the contrary. We have made a commitment to support this project and feel it can provide much of the infrastructure needed to allow us to focus on building RAD and high productivity features. The challenge is timing key features and availability of codebase. Given current state of Webtools, we will continue with MyEclipse native infrastructure until the project matures in scope and delivery.2. Beehive and Pollinate. We have made a commitment to support this effort, but will have to defer any comments until the project benefits from further definition and scope.
3. UML support. The next logical step beyond visual Struts and JSF support, at least for Web Application development. This effort will require the full attention and contribution of the MyEclipse team.
So to give you a long answer to a short question, MyEclipse 2.9 and Q3 activities will focus on spit and polish items 1-7 as outlined in this note. This will provide the needed foundation for UML support in Q4. WebTools and Pollinate could influence some of the activities but not the direction.
Regards,
Wayne Parrott
VP, Product Management
Genuitec, LLC1. JSP 2.0 and Java 1.4 support.
Wow…I had no idea it didn’t support 1.4. Is there a “supported versions” page we can easily view and track which versions of related products are supported (java, jsp, struts, deployable servers, etc.) by different releases?
2. Flexible project support. 3.8 Beta-1 provided dependent project support. A good start, but doesn’t fully address our user needs.
There was talk in other forums that some form of flexible project support would come in beta1…or maybe beta2. Is part of this still planned for beta2? Specifically, some of us just want to be able to edit/debug jsp files w/o “not in webroot” errors when the jsps are not located in appdir/WebRoot. I’m anticipating this feature and will need to put ME down for a while unless it’s coming up. I don’t even need deployment, just proper error checking and debugging.
