Athena Common Builder: Thanks to the early adopters!

Here's a quick list of some of the projects @ Eclipse.org currently using Athena. If you haven't tried Athena, maybe it's time!

1. Linux Tools
2. Visual Editor (VE)
3. Voice Tools (VTP)
4. PDE Declarative Services Modeling Incubator (pde.ds.modeling.incubator)
5. Nebula Widgets Gallery
6. Faceted Project Framework (fproj)
7. EMF Query (EMF MQ)
8. EMF Validation (EMF VF)
9. EMF Transaction (EMF MT)
10. Ajax Tools Framework (ATF)

And @ JBoss.org, all available in JBoss Tools 3.1.0.M2 for Eclipse 3.5 (Galileo) ...

1. JMX Console
2. BPEL Editor*
3. jBPM 3 and 4
4. FreeMarker
5. ...to name but a few.

* - will be available in M3 or you can get a nightly build here.

What are people saying about Athena?

"[I] really like the new build. It is much less confusing then the old [Common Modeling] one."

"[C]ongrats for this builder. It is quite good and I'm eager to rely fully on it."

"We are playing around with Athena and finding it really useful. It is already deployed to one of our customer developments. Thanks a lot for the hard work! We will definitely try to contribute back anything useful we will have in the process."

So, how do *you* get started? Here's a FAQ. Here's our New and Noteworthy. And here's all the rest of the knowledge base articles.

Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that there's a big list of requested features still waiting for contributions. If you use Athena, you're already half-way to contributing back. Want to help? Drop me a line any time and we can discuss what holes need filling that match your skills and most directly improve your use of PDE, p2 and Athena.

Vacation Planning / Process Modeling

This summer I'm attending the wedding of two friends in Victoria, BC. So, since we're travelling across the country anyway, we're going to take some time to explore Vancouver Island a little.

And because I'm a total Eclipse fanboy (despite the fact that certain people tell me Eclipse is dead), I thought it was time to play with the BPMN Modeler again. Version 1.0.2 (for Eclipse 3.4 / Ganymede) just came out today (update site).

So here's me planning the trip:

Aside: Wondering what's in Telegraph Cove? Check this out.

It may not have the same graphical wow factor as, say, Google Maps' "My Maps" feature...

... but it does clearly show two things:

a) the BPMN Modeler is stable and works great for modeling my workflows, regardless of whether I intend to do anything programmatic w/ the resulting diagram, and

b) air fare and car rentals cost too much. :)

I also tried out the in-progress BPMN Modeler 1.1M6, and while it adds some cool features to help align items in your swimlanes, it's also not quite ready for prime-time use. Looking forward to 1.1M7 next month.

Who says modeling can't be fun?

Modeling: From Zero to Seventy

Remember when no one had heard of EMF? When it was just Ed Merks, Frank Budinsky, and Dave Steinberg? Me neither.

These days modeling is everywhere, and with good reason. There are now a total of 70 people contributing to and committing for the various Modeling projects, the most recent additions being from MDT (Papyrus, BPMN2), EMF (CDO), and TMF (Xtext).

So, is it any surprise that there are 29 Modeling Track talks this year at EclipseCon, from the introductory Mega Modeling Mania BoF to the double-black-diamond GMF and QVT: roads (finally) crossed?

And that's not even including a couple of e4 talks about The Modeled UI in Eclipse e4 and The e4 Programming Model Across Web and Desktop or one about Designing an Android Domain Specific Modeling Language using EMF, GEF and GMF!

I guess some people are just unbearably stupid, eh?

HOWTO Create a Seam Web Project with JBoss Tools 2.0.0.CR2 or Developer Studio 3.0.0.CR2

As Max announced earlier today, JBoss Tools (JBT) 3.0.0.CR2 is now available.

In my continuing effort to automate - or at least document! - everything I do, here's a quick slideshow showing how to install and run JBoss Developer Studio (JBDS) 2.0.0.CR2 to quickly create a Seam Web Project. JBDS includes most of JBT, plus a few extra goodies.

view larger images

What else can you do with JBoss Developer Studio or JBoss Tools? Lots. Here's a list of the individual plugins, and the reference guides. There's even a jBPM/BPMN diagram editor, which I used recently to sketch out my Blackberry data sync flows:

click to enlarge

JBDS is available for Linux (gtk x86_32 and x86_64), Mac OS X (carbon), and Windows (32-bit). JBT is available for any platform that can run Eclipse 3.4.x. On Fedora, JBDS and JBT both run great with IcedTea (OpenJDK 6) and Fedora Eclipse 3.4.1.

If you're curious, the software involved here is: Virtual Box 2.1.0 running in Fedora 10, hosting a Windows XP Home guest, HyperSnap 6 to grab snapshots (works in Windows guest and through WINE - though not as well - in Linux host), Sun Java 6.0 to run JBDS (or Eclipse + JBoss Tools), Picasa 3 For Linux to crop, resize and upload images, then create the slideshow.

Blackberry Linux Mail, Calendar, Tasks & Contact Sync, Part 2

Things have improved since my last post, despite the fact that I managed to kill Thunderbird along the way and lost a good chunk of today figuring out to restore it. Luckily I can read French, or I may never have found the solution to the elusive -203 problem.

Aside:

To recover from a corrupt Thunderbird profile, create a new profile using thunderbird -ProfileManager, then transfer your data to the new profile. Easy-peasy.

Next, reinstall all your extensions. I use these 15 extensions.

I've also managed to get barry to work for backing up my Blackberry on Fedora. Turns out the problem is that it simply needs root privileges.

Here's how the data flows, drawn with JBoss Tools' jBPM Graphical Process Designer:

click to enlarge

I don't yet have a solution for Zimbra contacts & calendar being accessible on the Blackberry, short of manually duplicating entries from one repo to the other. Still, 5 out of 7 data sources synched is pretty decent.