All good ideas. Here is one more (IIRC I posted this before) -
integration with the current Swing modeler. Then the plugin will
become a "Modeler Plus" right away and will be a compelling tool for
the users even before it implements any other features.
Specifically I am thinking of a feature that would regenerate Java
classes in Eclipse once the Modeler saves the mapping. Cayenne
already has cross-JVM messaging mechanism built in, so sending events
between CayenneModeler and Eclipse should be fairly easy.
Andrus
On May 28, 2006, at 10:05 AM, Bruno J. M. Melo wrote:
Hello All!!
As most of you know, I'm developing this project for the GSoC, and
the
first step before start coding is decide about which features are
relevant
in a cayenne plugin.
Kevin commented about recent discussion in dev-list about cayenne
plugin.
After read the thread I grouped all interesting features below,
followed by
some other ideas:
- XML editing with content assist, validation, and etc.
- Outline view with operations (add+remove+delete fields/relations).
- Refactoring support
- Add database field to table. This should update the classes,
database, and
cayenne XML files.
- Quick fixes
This can be implemented in this way...
# Edit the cayenne files using multi-editor (similar to edit
plugin.xml in
PDE). Each kind of cayenne XML file (cayenne.xml, *.map.xml,
*.driver.xml)
will have the appropriated multi-editor. The advantage of this
approach is
the flexibility in develop either using higher-level abstraction
(similar to
CayenneModeler) or edit raw XML.
# Don't have a Cayenne Project, but "an instance of" Java
Project... using
decorators [1] in the same way that antlreclipse [2] do.
Your feedback are very important!! The worst thing that can happen
is create
a plugin who nobody uses.
[1] http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Decorators/decorators.html
[2] http://antlreclipse.sourceforge.net/
--
bruno
