Hello World
November 16, 2006 3:47 PM
Filed Under: Eclipse and Open Source WorkSpace SOA
Reading blogs and commenting on them are nothing new to me but having one of my own definitely requires a different way of thinking.
So as I write this, what comes to my mind? First, we here in WorkSpace team are quite excited with all the interest in WorkSpace from our early customers. We have put significant effort in the latest release 1.6 to make installing, buying and developing in WorkSpace a better experience. For one, you can now buy a specific WorkSpace component (Database Development, Enterprise Modeling, Web Application Development, or all or any combination of the components). The downloadable image size is also less as we have separated tooling from various runtime servers (in two separate zips). You can just download the tooling unless you need Service development related runtimes like Unwired Orchestrator, and EAServer.
My first suggestion to those new to Eclipse, would be to spend 10-15 minutes making themselves familiar with some key Eclipse things - perspectives, views, wizards, dialogs, preferences, project, toolbars, editors, and menus. Following details could help to get over the initial perceived complexity of Eclipse to a new user.
First thing to know is that perspective is just a pre-canned organization of some views. All available perspectives are listed in Window->Show Perspective.
Views are nothing but the subwindows that you see, each offering a specific functionality. For a list of views by perspectives, go to Window->Show View.
Wizards are helpers (like for creation of java class, sql file etc.) mostly launched from File->New option that guide thru a sequence of steps to achieve the task you want to do.
Dialogs are one screen where you can view and modify values most likely properties of a selected object.
Preferences are available in Window->Preferences that allow developers to customize the behavior of different parts of WorkSpace.
In Eclipse before you can save any files, you need to create a project. The project is nothing but a folder on file system where the file is actually located. Project has some attributes like nature(s) which dicates what kind of resources can be saved and associated properties due to the nature. Java nature on a project brings Java specific building capabilites. Most of the time, the tool itself would add the needed natures or would ask you before adding.
Moving on to toolbars, you will see main toolbar right below the workbench menu. Some buttons of this toolbar change depending on what is currently "visible" resource in the editor. Then there is a toolbar in each of the views. I haven't personally had to use many. I have mostly used one to import/export connection profile in Enterprise Explorer view, and other one that is for export of results in SQL Results view.
There are several menus. Main one is known as workbench menu that you see on the top in WorkSpace. Context menu is the menu which is shown when you right-click on an object anywhere in WorkSpace. This may be the first place/thing where you would want to look to locate tool that you need.
Also, remember that if you are not seeing something that should be in the perspective, open up Window->Show View to make some view visible. It may be that view is part of some other perspective or by default not shown in the current perspective.
Posted by Samir Nigam on November 16, 2006 3:47 PM
