BlackBox

Currently I am working on a generic Plug-in Architecture, that I will be able to use cross-project. I have two OpenSource projects and one Closed Source project that will be using this. The idea is that any plug-ins I develop on one I can easily modify and use in another.

To see the current discussion going on, check out our Wiki.

The next tricky bit will be devloping a UIPlugin framework, still not quite sure exactly how (or if) I will be doing this. I want to get my back-end Plug-in Arch working first then I will start thinking about this some more.

-warner

Just thought I would share some progress that I have been making on the Plugin architecture. Erik suggested using Avalon, however I feel that this is too heavy for what I want to do, plus I don’t want the architecture to rely on another external piece.

I have been primarily bouncing ideas of off Keith (one of my co-conspirators in Hedwig-land) in AIM and I think we have made some good progress.

Basically what we have come up with is something similar to Swing Events and Listeners. If you are interested in looking at the code, you can grab it from CVS under the plugin module. Once things get hammered out some more it will come out of there and go on warneronstine.com.

Here are some of the goals of the Plugin architecture (so you can see where we’re coming from)

• Relatively Lightweight
• Each plugin should be able to look up another plugin
• Should be able to register listeners on each plugin to listen for events
• Plugins should be able to consume and produce data streams
• Should have as few external dependencies as realistically possible
• Plugins should be able to register themselves for particular data streams

I think with our latest round of discussions we have ironed out most of the big wrinkles and will now start working on the medium-size ones. I’m hoping to have some kind of working implementation by the end of the week. This will give us an opportunity to start actually using it and finding any holes we missed. Unit tests are one thing, actually developing a real plugin is another .

I will keep you all posted on latest Wafer devlopments, just a little while ago a wiki was set up for it.

I was having a chat with my friend Erik about some of the problems that exist in the Open Source world, specifically the Java Open Source community.

So, besides the obvious (documentation), what are some of the other problems?
Comparisons – There are a number of different implementations that solve the same problems. Yet these can be difficult to

• Understand what problem they solve
• Understand how these might compare to other systems that solve the same problem
• See how a system that might have been designed for one purpose but is perfectly suited to perform in another capacity

So, what are some prime examples of this?

• XML parsing, processing – I can think of at least 3 different technologies that do things with XML to ease creation and processing (JDOM, DOM4J, and Xerces)
• Web Application Frameworks – There are several of these out there as well, what’s the difference? Why were they done in the first place?
• Object/Relational Mapping Tools – again, there are several implementations, why choose one over another?

So, as developers what can we do (and I’m guilty of this as well)?

• Explain our reasoning behind the architecture
• What other frameworks are out there that do what we want to do?
• How are they different from ours?

What else can be done?

1)
Those of us who have actually used multiple frameworks (be they XML, Web App, or O/R Tools) should write up some comparisons and post them online. But they shouldn’t be dead documents, they need to be living, invite others who have used a competing framework to add to your doc, your code examples, whatever. I am eating my own dogfood in this instance. I have used Torque for quite a while, and decided to start looking at some of the other O/R Tools. While I have decided to use Hibernate for most of my projects moving forward, I created a comparison package for Torque, Hibernate, OJB, Castor, whatever. Please visit ortools.warneronstine.com, checkout the code, send me patches, give me docs, whatever, I want this to be a living comparison of Object/Relational Mapping Tools.

2)
Let our respective communities know about our taste-test contest. If others don’t know about what we are trying to accomplish they can’t help. This help can come in the form of links to other comparisons (living or dead), code, documentation, patches, whatever.

3)
Take up the gauntlet! Write some code, contribute some docs. Honestly if you use something like Hibernate, or Struts, you should feel some obligation to helping promote them. Now i’m not saying that you have to do a lot, just donate 2 or 3 hours to something you use. Compared to the weeks, months, and sometimes years that most developers sink into projects it’s nothing, but it helps. But if you don’t I won’t hold it against you .