Minutes: Eclipse Members Meeting
Eclipse Members
 
eclipse members meeting


Eclipse Members Meeting
October 27, 2004, Dallas, Texas

Updated November 18th to include voting results table.

Attendees

The list of attendees is provided here.

Minutes

Executive Director Report

Mike Milinkovich started the meeting with his Executive Director Report. A copy of his presentation can be found here.

Open Source Project Review

Mike Milinkovich reviewed the status of the Eclipse top-level projects. A copy of his presentation can be found here.

Detailed Project Presentation - BIRT

Paul Clenahan from Actuate introduced the Business Intelligence and Reporting project to the attendees. His presentation can be found here.

Add-in Provider Requirements Session

Todd Williams and Rich Main (Eclipse Add-in Provider Board Representatives) lead a session to develop a list of themes and priorities from the perspective of the Add-in Provider community. This list will be used as input into the Requirements Council.

The process followed to develop the list of themes and priorities was as follows:

  • Rich Main led a brainstorming session to identify potential topics for break-out groups. 8 topics were identified:
    • Abstract Language Developer Toolkit
    • Business Intelligence and Reporting
    • Embedded
    • Marketing
    • Rich Client Platform
    • Testing and Performance
    • Web Tools Project
  • Two sets of four break-out groups were given 1 hour to develop a list of requirements for the given topic. Each attendee could select which break-out group they would participate in.
  • All the break-out groups reported back and presented their list of requirements.
  • Each person was allowed to vote on their priority requirements. The process of voting was done by allowing each attendee 25 points that could be allocated across all the different requirements. All the votes were then tabulated to come up with the final list of priorities.

The prioritized list is as follows:

  1. Raise awareness of Eclipse at CIO level
    - Success reports/stories
  2. Market Research
    - Market size
    - Market profile
  3. Abstract Language Toolkit
    - Editor
    - Debugger
    - Build
  4. Better componentization in different DTs as many embedded project are multi-language and to enable easier plug-ins for specialized components (debuggers, managed builds, editors)
  5. Reduce inconsistency among OS platforms
  6. Enterprise Deployment
    - JNLP integration
    - Enterprise Update Manager
    - Managed updates
    - scalable Update Manager (mirrors/ BitTorrent)
    - push updates
    - license managed
  7. Basic web-services tools
    - UDDI browser
    - XSL/T editor
    - WSDL tools
  8. Support for common reports
    - listing reports
    - sorting, grouping, aggregation
    - crosstab reports
    - freeform reports (e.g., invoices)
    - charts
  9. Eclipse pug-in certification service (through external service providers)
  10. User interface improvements
    - SWT/JFace improvements
    - Improved SWT/ Swing interop.
    - More native hooks into Windows
  11. Authentication/ Security
    - User authentication and credentials
    - Role-based security
    - Role-based plugin loading
  12. Ease of use
    - be productive in 15 minutes
  13. RCP Scalability
    - minimum runnable RCP and Update Manager
    - full IDE with complete hide/reveal (e.g., "Build")
  14. Scalability
  15. Unified View/Editor framework
    - Editor embedded in editor
    - Key bindings
    - Toolbar management
  16. Abstract server definition
  17. Expose capabilities and services through interfaces that can be accessed independent of CDT, JDT, etc.
  18. More generic ways to connect to "targets" and launch applications. Run tests, run tools and gather data, etc.
  19. Provide an interface that allows an additional agent to be used for data collection (i.e., for embedded devices)
  20. Refactor data-tools and web-services feature-sets into separate development projects.
  21. Eclipse package integration
  22. Data Query APIs should be separate project
    - enables query features to be used by other tools
  23. Concentrate more on extensible frameworks than end-user tools
  24. Testing - need a universal client
  25. Deployment to local and remote servers
  26. TPTP/ Hyades should abstract ways to do tracing of hardware (at chip level), not just software tracing
  27. TPTP/ Hyades should look at monitoring of deployed embedded systems (in addition to enterprise)
  28. DT should abstract debugging more for hardware capabilities
  29. JSR-88 compliance for J2EE deployment
  30. Meta-information use for EJB developers.
    - EJB-3 metadata annotations
    - XDoclet support
  31. EJB universal client
  32. Improve transparency of architecture and requirements processes
  33. Do not preclude other runtimes
    - J#
  34. Clear market messaging/positioning for BIRT
    - BIRT is a new space for Eclipse

Detailed results of voting scores are available here (.pdf)


Market Research Proposal

Wayne Madden of Penton Media presented a proposal to have Penton conduct a market research study on the use of Eclipse.

Marketing Report

Ian Skerrett reviewed the current marketing activities around Eclipse. A copy of the presentation can be found here.

Membership Report

Skip McGaughey updated the attendees of the membership and recruitment activities. A copy of the presentation can be found here.