xtext + redview == businessapptester

last months florian pirchner was working on a customer project, where redView and xtext are used to simplify testing of an ERP solution.

and as always usual for florian and me: there will be something open sourced

What was the problem of our customer ? there are many modifications and configuration done for  their ERP solution and the ERP vendor couldn’t guarantee that new releases of the software will work well together with the customer’s customizations.

So they have created an extra test database (that’s always a good idea) and the business departments have created huge Excel sheets to define all the use-cases to be tested against the new release. (per ex. if customer x gets 3 parts of item y the price must be n EUR)

But manually testing these things is very slow, time-consuming and error prone. They also thought about writing Unit tests (this is possible because they bought the SDK of the ERP solution). Unit tests are great and can be automated – that’s good. But now they always need help from IT or developers and all the business use cases are hidden inside many test classes. Also it’s boring to write many test classes testing the same behaviour with different data.

BusinessAppTester

The BusinessAppTester will simplify writing those test classes. Using Xtext you can design the data schema to be used by a bunch of test runs easy. The corresponding Java code to inject the data was automagically be generated.

Using redView together with Xtext you get the formulas to enter the different data on the fly dynamically rendered.

Because it’s redView you can re-design the layout how you like it.

All is stored in EMF ecore models: redView’s view model, test schemata, test instances – and now you can use all tooling available for EMF – per ex. EMFStore or CDO to work in teams with the models.

BusinessAppTester is the first time where redView also uses EObjects as domain model – before we used EMF for the View model but only Beans or POJOs as domain models. Now you’re completely free to use the domain model you want.

Video and EclipseCon

there’s a video demonstrating BusinessAppTester: http://vimeo.com/17955045

and there’s also an EclipseCon submission: stop writing boring unit tests.

BusinessAppTester will be at EclipseLabs in january 2011 and the new redView release will be there this month.

We designed BusinessAppTester as a generic tool be used from Java Projects and also PlugIn Projects to simplify testing where you have to test against different data scenarios.
—————————————————————————————————————————

Eclipse Democamps, Stammtisch and Conference

Democamps

This year’s November Democamps I managed the Democamp Munich (together with Max and Jonas from EMFStore) and also had a talk at Democamp Dortmund.

It’s always great to meet other Eclipse developers and every time I’m learning something new: – at Democamp Dortmund first time I got a “Hövels“:

thanks Karsten Thoms mentioning this. (@caniszczyk: if you ever plan a trip to Dortmund you should try some Hövels fortunately I had booked a hotel for that night…

Stammtisch

Because of great success of Eclipse Democamp Munich with 100+ registered attendees, Max, Jonas an I are planning an “Eclipse Stammtisch” in Munich: 2011-02-07 – please reserve the date in your calendar, we’re planning this Stammtisch at a cool location:

Unionsbräu Munich – Haidhausen – a small local brewery. (and yes: Ralph Müller will also attend

Karsten, you’re invited to try this one

To be serious: Eclipse Democamps are not only about drinking beer: you always learn from other developers experiences. I talked about Mobile and Enterprise Development using Eclipse – esp. about my experiences to develop BlackBerry Java Apps.

Christkindl Market

This december I’m enjoying the “Rosenheim Christkindl Market“: the location is directly below our living room and my home-office – so there are only some stairs to get the next “Glühwein”

Conference

December is also an important month, because the EclipseCon Program Committee is selecting the sessions and I’m sure EclipseCon will again be a great event for the Eclipse Community.

There are some proposals from me:

• Enterprise and Mobile Development
  • “Enterprise to go” – put your mobile business apps into your pocket (Standard Talk)
  • Mobile Software Development for BlackBerry using Eclipse: Lessons learned (Extended Talk)
  • “The Pusher – How do you deal with Push Services from Enterprise to mobile Devices” (Extended Tutorial)
• Modeling and More
  • Dynamic Views for Business Apps and more (Standard Talk)
  • stop writing boring (business app) unit tests (Standard Talk)
• DVCS (Distributed Version Control Systems)
  • distributed version control without the commandline (Standard Talk)

There’s also a video from EclipseCon Audit Session in Ignite format: http://www.vimeo.com/16990998

—————————————————————————————————————————

mobile, modeling and more at Eclipse Summit Europe

next week Eclipse Summit Europe will start again and I’m looking forward to see you there. If you’re not registered yet – you should do it now: there are only 30 spots left as Ian Skerrett blogged.

this year Eclipse Summit is a full 3-day conference full of sessions and symposia. here are some I’m involved into:

Mobile Development Symposium

Together with Peter Friese, Heiko Behrens and Marcus Harringer I’m moderating the Mobile Development Symposium on Tuesday, 2 pm – 6 pm. If you’re interested into mobile development, you’re invited to attend the Symposium. We’ll discuss about

• Programming Models
• Cross-Platform Development
• Distribution Channels
• Monetary Aspects
• …

If you have experiences you want to talk about, you can submit your ideas here, but of course we’re open to everyone ! We’ll talk and discuss about

• iOS
• Android
• Java ME
• BlackBerry
• and more

we want to share our experiences and are looking forward to yours.

I have prepared something about my BlackBerry – BusinessApps – development from last months.

At the same time I’m at the Mobile Development Symposium, there’s another great Symposium….

Eclipse Modeling Symposium

Ed Merks, Ken Hussey, Sven Efftinge and Cedric Brun are moderating the Modeling Symposium and they plan a series of lightning talks and short demos to spark lively group discussion. It will be great opportunity to meet and greet and to reflect on past accomplishments as well as to chart a course for the future.

I don’t know about all the talks prepared for Eclipse Modeling Symposium, but Florian Pirchner – my partner at redView – will demonstrate some cool things he developed using

• redView
• EMF
• Riena
• Xtext
• JDT
• JUnit

… a business app tester:

DVCS – Distributed Version Control at Eclipse: EGit and Mercurial

More and more developers are moving away from CVS and SVN to GIT or MERCURIAL. If you’re thinking about to switch: Eclipse Summit will help you to decide:

• Distributed Version Control – practices from daily work with EGit and MercurialEclipse – I’ll talk about my experiences and demonstrate how to solve your daily workflows using EGit and MercurialEclipse without using the commandline !
• Using Git in Eclipse – Chris Aniszczyk and Matthias Sohn will demonstrate what’s new with Git/EGit
• Process Improvement in Distributed Software Development – Using Eclipse with Mercurial and Git – Dagmar Bisky-Groh and Janos Koppany from Intland about Mercurial, Git and Mylyn integration

I promise: if you’ll see live what’s possible using DVCS in Eclipse you’ll move your projects

Dynamic EMF Views (not only) for OSGI Business Applications

…and last but not least: there’s a session about redView.

last months I was hard working on some customer projects (yes – someone has to pay for beer, chocolate and more and couldn’t get enough time for my Open Source projects redView and red-open.

But since some weeks Florian Pirchner who leads these projects together with me has finished his job as employee and now is working full-time as freelancer and last weeks he developed some really cool things for redView: better selection- and drag-n-drop support, wizards, Xtext – integration, EMF as domain-model and more.

Also EMFStore made some progress to get rid of the superclass at the moment needed for the EMF Metamodels and we decided to include this into the 1.0 release.

Come to our session to get the newest informations what’s going on with redView and red-open.

…see you at Eclipse Summit Europe

I’ll also talk at some Eclipse democamps about my experiences with BlackBerry Eclipse Development:

Eclipse Democamps 2010 November:

• Munich 2010-11-23
• Dortmund 2010-11-30

—————————————————————-