What's cooking in the EDT kitchen? - June 25

This is the latest weekly blog post designed to let you know what's coming in EDT 0.8.1.  You can read the previous week's post here.

We finished writing new code for 0.8.1 Milestone 3 last week.  We're about halfway done testing it, so we expect to have a Milestone 3 build for you by the end of this week.  Several more weeks of testing will follow Milestone 3, and then we'll be done with the 0.8.1 release.

We spent a lot of time last week on tests: writing them, reviewing them, and running them.  Many tests are written with our EUnit framework.  We also worked on our documentation.  Here are a few other significant things we accomplished.

IDE Usability 

• Continued to work on a code formatter
• Update the wizards for the data types added in this release

Language

• Updated our sample projects with the new service invocation syntax

Other

• Supported the 2012 IBM Rational EGL Programming contest, open to university students in China http://www.ibm.com/software/cn/rational/eglcontest/ (the page is in Chinese). We're excited to have 104 teams from 35 universities and academies involved in the contest! Awards will be presented at the Beijing Innovate conference in August. 
• Developers continue investigation on integration with new mobile technologies

Matt

What's cooking in the EDT kitchen? - June 18

I'm posting once again to let you know what the EDT development team worked on last week.  You can read the previous week's post here.

Last week we served you 0.8.1 Milestone 2.  It took longer to cook than we expected, but we think it was worth the wait.  While some of us were finishing Milestone 2, the rest we already working on the enhancements and fixes for Milestone 3.  We have now reached the end of the development period for M3.  It's the final milestone of the release, and we've just begun testing it.

Here are the significant items we worked on last week (some of them won't officially appear until version 0.8.2).

IDE Usability 

• Enhanced the EGL editor with a vertical ruler, and support for "Link With Editor" on files from EGLARs
• Began work on a code formatter
• Continued work on debugging with files in EGLARs, including our system types
• Made the Variables view in the debugger recognize new types

Extensibility

• Worked on a prototype for the extensible type system

Language

• Adding support for our newest datatypes to wizards, IBM i support, and SQL
• Changed service invocations to make them more generic
• Ensured that operators work properly with null operands
• Refined and extended the APIs of several types: bytes, time, timestamp
• Added the 'xor' operator for boolean operands
• Supported constructors and the 'super' keyword
• Improved the way Java programs detect NullValueExceptions

Other

• We held a stakeholder feedback meeting to review what's in M2 and what's coming in M3. 
• Updated many testcases in our test framework, making it easier to connect known failures with their defects
• Supported the 2012 IBM Rational EGL Programming contest, open to university students in China http://www.ibm.com/software/cn/rational/eglcontest/ (the page is in Chinese). We're excited to have 104 teams from 35 universities and academies involved in the contest! Awards will be presented at the Beijing Innovate conference in August. 
• Developers continue investigation on integration with new mobile technologies

Matt

Version 0.8.1 Milestone 2 is available

... with new features and a promise of more to come:

• When you are working on an EGL project, you can review the EGL type definitions that are provided for you. You have immediate access to the details of the technology.
  
  The type definitions are stored in EGL archive (EGLAR) files.  In the future, you'll be able to protect your proprietary logic by distributing code in those kind of files, just as you distribute Java code in JAR files.


• New EGL language improvements are in place:
  
  • You can use the forEach statement to iterate through a list of any type.
  • You can define the type of a numeric literal to control memory usage.
  • You can use bitwise operators to set flags and to do other tasks efficiently.
  • You can declare variables of type STRING(n) and TIME. Use STRING(n) to integrate with IBM i programs; and TIME to write simple code when a timestamp is either too complex or interferes with IBM i or SQL integration.

In the near term, you can look forward to ease of coding on a new front: you'll be able to write widgets for mobile applications. You can also look forward to greater ease of thought: you'll be able to access different kinds of back-end logic in the same way, whether the logic is a host program or a service.

The technology is gaining consistency and power.  Why not take a closer look?

• See what's new and noteworthy
• Download the EGL Web Development Tools
• Review and contribute to the EDT project wiki

Ben

What's cooking in the EDT kitchen? - June 11

This is the latest weekly blog post designed to let you know what's being cooked up for the next version of EDT.  In case you missed it, read last week's post.

Much of last week was spent polishing the code for 0.8.1 Milestone 2. We tested, fixed bugs, and verified the fixes. We wrote, reviewed, and revised documentation. We did the following other stuff too (though most of it won't appear in our builds until M2 is done):

IDE Usability

• Continued work on debugging with files in EGLARs

Language

• Started adding support for our newest datatypes in IBM i
• Ensured that operators work properly with null operands
• Fixed problems with the implementation of the bytes type

Other

• EDT was mentioned in several sessions relating to EGL at Innovate 2012, the Rational Software Conference.  
• EDT stakeholder meeting will be this week - Wed, June 13th at 10am Eastern US. Anyone interested in EDT is welcome to attend to learn more about what is in EDT 0.8.1 Milestone 2 and what's coming in M3. This is your chance to talk directly to the developers and provide your input on what 
• Supported the 2012 IBM Rational EGL Programming contest, open to university students in China http://www.ibm.com/software/cn/rational/eglcontest/ (the page is in Chinese). We're excited to have 87 teams with 160 people from 28 universities involved in the contest! Awards will be presented at the Beijing Innovate conference in August. 
• Developers continue investigation on integration with new mobile technologies

Matt

What's cooking in the EDT kitchen? - June 4

This is the latest weekly blog post designed to let you know what's coming in EDT 0.8.1.  In case you missed it, read last week's post.

In the past week, we mostly worked towards reaching the second milestone of the release.  We wrote tests, ran them, and fixed bugs.  Here are the other important things we did:

IDE Usability

• Continued work on "open declaration" (F3) in the editor for files in EGLARs

Extensibility

• Worked on a prototype for the extensible type system

Language

• Made all of the type conversion code able to accept and return null

Other

• Investigated integration with new mobile technologies
• Supported the 2012 IBM Rational EGL Programming contest, open to university students in China http://www.ibm.com/software/cn/rational/eglcontest/ (the page is in Chinese). We're excited to have 87 teams with 160 people from 28 universities involved in the contest! Awards will be presented at the Beijing Innovate conference in August. 

Matt

What's cooking in the EDT kitchen? - May 29

Once again, here is my weekly blog post letting you know what we're working on for the next version of EDT. Normally I post these on Mondays, but yesterday was the Memorial Day holiday in the US. In case you missed it, read last week's post.

As a reminder, I don't mention the things we do routinely, like fixing defects, answering questions on the forum, writing documentation, etc.

Here are last week's accomplishments:

IDE Usability

• Continued work on "open declaration" (F3) in the editor for files in EGLARs
• Improved the way a native type is displayed in the debugger's Variables view

Extensibility

• The prototype for extensible validation is nearly complete

Language

• Updated time, timestamp, and date formatting to match our specification
• Added support for more datatypes in XML coming from JavaScript
• Implemented the string(n) and bytes(n) types in JavaScript (this was already done in Java)

Other

• Prepared for the test phase of 0.8.1 Milestone 2 by writing test scenarios and testcases
• Investigated integration with new mobile technologies
• Supported the 2012 IBM Rational EGL Programming contest, open to university students in China http://www.ibm.com/software/cn/rational/eglcontest/ (the page is in Chinese). We're excited to have 87 teams with 160 people from 28 universities involved in the contest! Awards will be presented at the Beijing Innovate conference in August. 

Matt

What's cooking in the EDT kitchen? - May 22

This is the latest weekly blog post designed to let you know what's being cooked up for the next version of EDT. Normally I post these on Mondays, but I was out sick yesterday (no, it wasn't the cheese-like substance in fridge). In case you missed it, read last week's post.

Last week we continued making progress toward our goals for EDT 0.8.1.  Here are the details:

IDE Usability

• Add search capability to the Open Part dialog
• Make a "library" entry in the EGL Path of an EGLAR for the built-in types
• Implement "open declaration" (F3) in the editor for files in EGLARs

Extensibility

• Prototype extensible validation
• Refactored annotation generation

Language

• Add support for more datatypes in XML coming from JavaScript

Other

• Finished the test phase of 0.8.1 Milestone 1 with a success rate of 95%. We won't be posting a milestone driver for M1 since much of the work has been to refactor for extensibility and less new functions.We do plan to post a milestone driver for M2. If you really want the latest, you can get the nightly builds though they are often not as stable as milestone or release builds. 
• Investigate integrating with new mobile technologies. 
• Support the 2012 IBM Rational EGL Programming contest, open to university students in China http://www.ibm.com/software/cn/rational/eglcontest/ (the page is in Chinese). We're excited to have 87 teams with 160 people from 28 universities involved in the contest! Awards will be presented at the Beijing Innovate conference in August. 

Matt