Re: Eclipse plug-in for Derby base

[Rajesh Kartha <ka...@Source-Zone.Org>]

Hello,

I agree that a Derby plug-in will be useful for the application and 
plug-in developers using
the Eclipse framework.

I have some ideas about creating a simple Derby plug-in.   The plug-in 
could consist of:

Name                                   Details
-----------                           -------------
org.apache.derby.core          contains all the Derby related jars 
(derby.jar,derbytools.jar and derbynet.jar)
                                            and the plugin.xml

By creating this plug-in for Derby all the related jars can be made 
available to the Eclipse environment.
This plugin can be used in application and other plug-in development 
that would require an 'embedded'
database.  Other plug-ins can create dependency on this and build on top 
to provide more functionality.
The version of this plug-in can follow the same Derby versioning 
(similar to JUnit plug-in for Eclipse,
which follows the versioning of the JUnit testing framework).

For example: org.apache.derby.core_10.0.2.1 (or whichever the latest 
release of Derby will be).

The JCC jdbc driver (Network Server Connectivity) part is not included, 
as it is not open sourced by IBM. 

I will be happy to work on the 'core' plug-in and contribute it to the 
same mailing list for review.

BC, regarding the questions in your e-mail:

1) Is it reasonable that such a plug-in be maintained and released with
the Derby project, rather than the Web Tools project?  I'm happy to
contribute a patch for such a plug-in.

 I can submit the plug-in to the committers and ask for a vote on 
whether they will host it at Apache.

2) Is it possible to have an Eclipse "update site" from the Apache web
site (that is, a site from which Eclipse can look for new updates to the
Derby plug-in)?  If so, what would it take to do that?

I will also describe the update site and ask for a vote on that.

3) Like JUnit, I expect that we'd want the plug-in release numbers to be
in synch with the Derby release numbers.  Has the release number scheme
been figured out?  (Does the version available from the incubator have a
version number?)

I agree, the right approach should be to have the plug-in release number 
to be in sync with the
Derby ones. Derby does have a versioning scheme. The current version of 
Derby, I believe, is 10.0.2.1.


Please feel free to send me your comments.

Regards,
Rajesh


----- Message from "B.C. Holmes" <bc...@bcholmes.org> on Sun, 17 Oct 2004 
11:23:53 -0400 -----
 To:derby-user@db.apache.org  
Subject: Eclipse plug-in for Derby base   


Hi,

     My name is BC Holmes, and I've started working with the Data Tools
part of the Eclipse Web Tools project.  One of the goals for data tools
is to include Derby as an "easy to test with" database.  Some example
operations include: being able to start and stop Derby (like so many
J2EE plug-ins allow one to start and stop a J2EE container), install and
test Java stored procedures (and debug them), etc.

     Obviously one of the plugins that needs to be created for Eclipse
is a simple Derby plug-in.  This plug-in would simply contain the Derby
code so that other plug-ins could call the Derby API.  There's some
concern that if Eclipse distributes such a Derby plug-in, that it looks
like Eclipse is endorsing one DB over another.

     So I'm interested in three things:

1) Is it reasonable that such a plug-in be maintained and released with
the Derby project, rather than the Web Tools project?  I'm happy to
contribute a patch for such a plug-in.

2) Is it possible to have an Eclipse "update site" from the Apache web
site (that is, a site from which Eclipse can look for new updates to the
Derby plug-in)?  If so, what would it take to do that?

3) Like JUnit, I expect that we'd want the plug-in release numbers to be
in synch with the Derby release numbers.  Has the release number scheme
been figured out?  (Does the version available from the incubator have a
version number?)


Thanks,
BC   

-- 
B.C. Holmes             \u2625                  http://www.bcholmes.org/
"I can bend minds with my spoon."