Since last year we are offering an Eclipse Plugin that integrates  the JVx workflow into Eclipse. Now that EPlug 1.2 has been released, we believe it's long overdue to give you a guided tour of the experience that EPlug is offering.

Trial

We offer a free trial period so that you can test EPlug without any problems. The first time you start Eclipse with EPlug you will be asked if you'd like to only test EPlug, or if you'd like to select an already purchased Pro license.

When clicking the Trial button, a new trial license will be issued and you'll be able to evaluate EPlug with all features for 30 days.

'First Run' Wizard

One of the biggest usability improvements compared to previous versions is discoverability of how to use and activate EPlug. With the new version we have added a "First Run Wizard" which allows to directly activate EPlug on selected projects.

Usage

EPlug integrates seamlessly into Eclipse, but to use most of its features it has to be activated on each project you want to use it with. This can be done in the previously shown First Run Wizard, or by right-clicking a project and selecting "Activate EPlug" under "Configure".

From there on you will be able to use code completion, compile time checks and all the other features on this project.

Better and extended commands

A handful of commands are added by EPlug, which make it faster to navigate in JVx projects.

Go to complement class

It's often the case that you want to go from the server to the client class, or from the client to the server class. Most of the time in Eclipse this involves expanding trees and looking for the correct class in the Package Explorer. That is why we've implement the command "Go to complement class", which enables you to quickly jump from the server to client, or the other way round.

As you can see the command is available from the context menu, but you can also bind it to a key in the "Keys" preferences.

Open Declaration

The "Open Declaration" command, sometimes known by its key binding "F3", allows you to jump to the declaration of whatever is currently under the cursor. We've extended this command with the possibility to jump to the declaration of event handlers (actions), server methods and storage's. If the item underneath the cursor is not handled by our extension, the default "Open Declaration" command will be invoked.

The declaration:

Because we've extended the "Open Declaration" command, you can bind the "Open Declaration (EPlug)" command also to "F3" and enjoy faster navigating in your JVx files without any downsides.

DataBooks

The biggest and most important feature of EPlug is its support for data books. EPlug offers code completion, compile time checks and more for column names on remote and local data books.

Code completion

Everytime you want to get or set a value, or wire up an editor you will receive code completion suggestions with all column names that are in the databook, it doesn't matter if those are remote or added locally.

Compile time checks

Of course we also added compile time checks, which means that you can never mistype a column name ever again.

With the newest version, these compile time checks are even active while you type!

Text hovers

When hovering above a column name, a simple text hover will inform you about the type of the column.

Storage support

RemoteDataBooks require to have the correct name set so that the server side storage is found, of course we do also offer code completion, compile time checks, text hovers and hyperlinks for this.

The DataBook View

And last but for sure not least, with the newest version a feature has been added which I've been looking forward to for quite some time: The DataBook View. A view similar to the Outline view, which displays all databooks in the current file and all of its columns.

Actions/Events and server calls

Support for actions, events and server calls is the second big EPlug feature. For events and actions we support a very Lambda-like system that uses reflection and strings. Obviously the compiler was never able to understand this system and provide feedback or support for it, but with EPlug this has changed.

Code Completion

Whenever you want to wire up an event, you'll now receive code completion for all fitting methods in the used class.

Action methods:

Remote calls:

As you can see in upper image, we also provide a fast and convenient way to create methods if necessary.

Compile time checks

During compilation the actions, events and server calls are checked for their correctness, and if there is a problem it'll be reported to you.

You can also see the quick fixes for this problem, which do not only offer to create the missing method, but also suggesting methods with similar names in case a typo happened.

Text hovers, hyperlinks and refactoring support

Additionally EPlug provides text hover and hyperlink support, that means that you can now jump to the methods by using your mouse (Ctrl+Left Click) or the "Open Declaration (EPlug)" command. Refactoring support has also been added, which means that you can now rename action/event handlers without having to manually search for all uses and change those.

Resources

Dealing with resources can often be a pain in the neck, especially if you constantly have to look up the path and check if you're now using the correct image. Because we also felt these pains, we've added functionality to EPlug to make sure that working with resources becomes easy and painless.

Support for UIImage

Whenever you use UIImage methods, you can now enjoy code completion, previews of the images and compile time checks.

Preview:

Compile checks:

Generic resource completion

For all other resources, we do only offer a "generic" code completion system and no preview. Still, this is a huge help.

Comments

One of the more simple and not so obvious features of EPlug is that it allows to have code completion of the current class in comments, and also provides the JVx category separators.

Separator:

Action/call completion in comments:

VisionX support

Now we've arrive at the big final, support for VisionX. For all of you who do not know VisionX, it is our product for rapidly building applications from scratch or migrating already existing systems. It allows to build GUIs and the respective database backend within a matter of minutes. Even though VisionX allows you to build whole applications, from time to time you'll want to do something by hand and this is the great thing about VisionX, all projects and applications are automatically and by design already Eclipse projects. So all you need to do is import the project into Eclipse and start working on it. To improve this workflow further EPlug does offer various features.

Selection synchronization

The selection in Eclipse and VisionX can be automatically synchronized, so that whatever you're working on in the one application is also visible and selected in the other

Automatic applying of changes

VisionX will also automatically refresh its current view if you change a sourcefile in Eclipse, allowing to rapidly and verify changes in a workscreen without the need to manually reload the workscreen.

How and where to get it?

EPlug comes in two flavors, EPlug for JVx and EPlug for VisionX, both are available from the Eclipse Marketplace and can be installed and used freely for 30 days. Afterwards a license is necessary to keep using all features.

We're happy to announce that our JavaFX UI 1.0 was released.

The release contains all planned features and some more. We have the complete MDI implementation, Zoom support for windows and the scene, a custom scene style, custom comboboxes and much more.

MDI control		Combobox

Styled Scene

Table format (cells)

Zoom

Master/Detail with Tables and Tree

All custom controls are available as separate library, JFXtensions. This library will work without JVx because it has no dependency to JVx. Simply use our MDI implementation or zoom feature for your own JavaFX application without using JVx.

Jar files are available at SourceForge or Maven central.

Our next steps?

We'll integrate the UI in our product VisionX to allow Live Preview with JavaFX. The first update release with version number 1.1. will contain smaller bugfixes and improvements based on user feedback.

So, send us your Feedback if you use our library.

First, we've released version 1.1 of our Demo ERP application. The full source code is available on SourceForge. It doesn't have more features than 1.0 because it's a simple lib upgrade release with improvements for developers.

The DemoERP.zip now contains the whole project structure and not only the source files. Simply unzip the archive, import the project in your Eclipse IDE and start the DemoERP.launch file (sure, DB must be configured manually). The archive contains small README files with additional information.

We fixed code signing problems and you shouldn't have any problems with DemoERP.war. So, simply deploy the war and open http://localhost/DemoERP/web/ui in your browser (see README).

The release contains our latest vaadinUI based on 7.4.5 and our latest JVx.mobile lib. The mobile lib was needed for our updated mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Yepp, we've new apps in the stores (still native but not based on JavaFX). The apps have a buch of new features like custom view styles (based on style property of JVx), image viewer/editor or the new Form view. But the biggest improvement was offline support. It's now possible to switch to offline mode and back to online mode. Sure, we sync your offline data!

It's an awesome feature because it's a generic solution and you don't have to change anything in your application. It simply works!

Both applications have the same features but system specific.
Here's the iOS link.
The Android app via Google Play.

Both apps work great with latest VisionX releases and simply use it to test your VisionX application - LIVE - without redeployments - on your mobile devices!

We're happy to announce our first beta release of JVx' JavaFX UI with version number 0.9

The release is two weeks later than planned but we had some extra tasks to do. We didn't set 1.0 as version number because we have some open tickets which are important, in our opinion, for 1.0. The 0.9 beta is already feature complete with some known bugs.

We also released an extra library: JFXtensions
It contains all standalone controls and extensions which are independent of JVx. The MDI system, our layouts, styled scene and much more.

Here are the download links:

• JVxFX UI & JFXtensions
• DnDTabPane (dependency for JVxFX UI)

All libraries are available on maven central as well.

We've released DnDTabPane as external lib on maven central, because it wasn't available and our UI needs the dependency. The DnDTabPane is licensed under EPL 1.0 and JVxFX UI, JFXtensions are Apache 2.0 licensed.

The DnDTabPane is still based on Tom Schindls implementation for Efxclipse.

We've a very cool video of our work during the last 4 months. It's the visualizaton of our dev repository:

Developer Information

The dev2015 branch was merged back to trunk. If you're working with our branch, please switch to trunk.

The current update release of VisionX 2.2.135 is available for our customers or as trial. It's a smaller update release with two important new features:

• Vaadin 7.4.2

  We've bundled vaadin 7.4 with our application and you can use all available features of vaadin 7.4. We currently don't use new Grid component of vaadin 7.4 because it's not implemented in our vaadin UI. We'll replace the Table with Grid as soon as possible.

• Corporation view

  This awesome view is now available out-of-the-box. Simply enable the design via web application settings screen.

The rest are fixes for smaller bugs:

• Support for username/password in Oracle JDBC Url
• protected access instead of public, for DBAccess
• Support all web setting in live preview (corporation design, navigation, mobile)
• Support for loading resources form public content area
• Don't delete unknown events from source file
• Designer update for better free-form layouts

Have fun with VisionX 2.2.135.

Today is a great day because I'm very happy to announce JVx - version 2.2.
It's an awesome release with soo many new features.

First of all, the LoC analysis. Here are some very interesting numbers for you:

Not bad if you compare it with other releases: 0.8, 1.0, 2.0.
We've still a very small codebase, compared to the features. The code quality and test coverage are still "green".

Some additional numbers:

Files and Tests

JVx library source files   594 Swing UI source files   135 Test source files   140 Total   869

Still a small codebase and still very easy to maintain. Here are more numbers, about testing:

Unit tests (no UI, without manual perf. tests)   958 Class coverage (without UI)   81% Method coverage (without UI)   69%

Our coverage got better since 2.0 - well done.

TOP 10 classes

Sure, MemDataBook and DBAccess are our main classes but we should check if it'll be possible to reduce complexity!

And last but not least, a short overview of new features:

• Performance tuning
  JVx got a boost. We pimped our model to be super fast. Sure, it was fast and we didn't have any problems... but during some code reviews, we found some lacks because of gc calls. The memory consumption wasn't perfect and not gc friendly. We created a lot of temporary String[] and event objects, even if the weren't needed.

  Long story, short: Inserting 2.000.000 records with 16 columns was done in about 23 seconds. Now: 1.5 seconds.

• Support for IoT/M2M/Microservices

  We pimped our remote communication a little bit. It's now possible to embedd JVx, especially the server class, in any environment that supports Java. We had an implementation for Java application serves like Tomcat or Wildfly, but no solution for plain socket servers. We put a lot of work in this part of JVx. We now have out-of-the-box solutions for vert.x or plain socket servers. It've never been easier to write remote applications with JVx.

• Better JNDI support

  We had JNDI support since JVx 1, but now it's bulletproof. Use JNDI to configure your database connection or the whole application. It's possible to load application config.xml via JNDI. Same is valid for server configuration. We allow, so called, virtual configurations.

• @PostConstruct and @PreDestroy

  We've support for both annotations in our server-side Lifecycle objects. It's now possible to remove your workarounds like:

  if (getClass() == Application.class)

  to find out whether the application LCO or session LCO was created. The session LCO extends the application LCO and otherwise it wasn't possible to do things only if application LCO was created, because constructor was called for every session LCO again.

• Lambda support

  It's soo much fun, working with lambdas and Java 8. We're happy to have full support for lambda expressions in JVx especially for event listener handling. And it's backwards compatible (Java 6, 7) without restrictions.
  Be sure that you recompile your JVx projects with JVx 2.2 library.

• Log4j support

  We love using built-in Java APIs like Logging API - because it doesn't need extra libraries. But we're open for 3rd party libraries and log4j(2) is too popular to ignore it. So we have official support for it in JVx. Simply use the new log factory com.sibvisions.util.log.log4j.Log4jLoggerFactory for your application and configure your loggers via log4j.properties or log4j2.xml.

• Spring security

  We had a customer request for supporting SAML 2.0 authentication. SAML what?
  Yes, we had the same question, but found that Spring framework had a solution for it: Spring Security SAML. We didn't reinvent the wheel and connected Spring security with our security mechanism. Here's the source code.

• HanaDBAccess

  HANA is the in-memory db solution of SAP. We've a connector for it. But be careful, because we weren't allowed to tune the database

• Bugfixes

The list isn't complete but contains some important features. The full changelog is available here.

The first preview release of VisionX 2.2 is available. The exact version number is 2.2.41.

It available as trial version or for our customers via download area.

The preview release contains updates of all dependent frameworks like JVx and vaadin UI.

Here's a list with more details:

• Responsive web applications
  

  Window shutter web control

• Browser navigation
• Application styles
• Support for embedded devices
• Style definition with VisionX
  

  Style definition

• New EPlug support
• Custom Database connection strings (e.g. Oracle TNS entry)
  

  Custom connection string

• Live Template support for work-screens
• XLSX reports instead of XLS
• Ready for application monitoring
• UI improvements
• Ready for native Android client

Sure, we fixed some bugs and we also improved overall performance because of improvements in JVx. The most interesting thing is the support for embedded devices like RaspberryPi.

Have fun with VisionX

It's done. We proudly present an awesome VisionX release. It has the version number 2.1.905 and has doubled its features.

Here are some of them:

• Undo & Redo

  It's now possible to Undo and Redo Actions and Reports. Simply add an action to a button undo the creation if you want. The action will be removed from the screen. It's also possible to add the action again, via redo.

  In VisionX 2.0, only UI elements could be deleted but not actions or reports.

• Eclipse integration

  It's a developer feature and allows bidirectional communication between Eclipse IDE and VisionX. Simply select an editor in VisionX and the source code in Eclipse will be selected. The integration allows faster development because you jump exactly to the source file and code line of your screen. Don't was time for searching properties and files. More...

• Layout Assistant
  

  The Layout assistant (designer) of VisionX 2.0 was column oriented and it wasn't possible to create free-form layouts without fixed positioning. The new layout assistant still is column oriented but you can use it free-form. You have all features of a layout manager (preferred size, automatic size calculation) but it's easy to create individual layouts which are not column oriented.

• ActionEditor

  It's a small feature, but the action editor now allows Finish without explicite validating the action. It save so many unnecessary klicks.

• PDF Reporting

  We have built-in support for toPDF in VisionX. With VisionX it's possible to create PDF reports as Document and Spreadsheet with Word and Excel. Create your report templates with Word or Excel and create PDF reports out-of-the-box. More...

• Mobile and Web
  

  VisionX got wizards for mobile und web settings. They allow styling of web and mobile applications like background color, background images, ... Simply define which image should be used in web or mobile applications instead of the original image, e.g. the mobile application should use flat images but the desktop shouldn't.

• Developer features

  It's now possible to set the name/ID of components. This feature is a developer feature and useful for automated GUI tests or styling via CSS. More...

• License options

  We offer subscription based VisionX usage. You can use and pay on a monthly base. We don't offer SaaS. VisionX will run in your environment.

  Also new is the support for SAP' Hana. If you work with Hana, you could use VisionX to create Hana based applications.

• Popup menu

  It's very easy to create custom popup menus for a component. Simply use the new customizer and define the action.
  More...

• Manual dropdown-list configuration

  We allow the creation of custom dropdown lists directly with VisionX. Create your own statements or storages and use the data wizard to configure the editors. More...

• Solution store

  The solution store offers ready-made solutions. We offer free and demo applications for learning purposes and also commercial solutions. The solution store is also available for your environment. You can install the store for your intranet, if you need a distribution platform your your applications, addons or modules. More...

• Responsive application

  Your new web applications will be responsive - out of the box. The styling of the application will be changed dependent of the browser size. We have an API for software developers to create responsive work screens. More...

• Desktop application

  Create a desktop application per click. Use VisionX to create a desktop application package.

• Other features

  Repeating frames
  QR Codes

Our customers should check their download area to get access to the new release.

We had some problems with our JVx 2.1 release. It had a bug in server-side processing of BLOB columns because of #987. It was not a problem on client-side, but standard CRUD operations failed.

The other problem was the reopen mechanism of connections. It was an unused feature till 2.1 and wasn't well tested. It worked but not in all circumstances. We refactored the implementation and made tests.

Both fixes are included in JVx 2.1.1.

Happy birthday JVx is 2.1

It's another great release today and ~ 6 month after 2.0. We have soo many cool features for you and of course some bugfixes.
The complete changelog is available on our sourceforge project site.

I want to highlight some features for you

• Configuration via JNDI or Classpath

  It's now possible to have custom configuration files without our recommended directory structure. We still recommend our structure for multi-application deployments, but it's not important for single deployments or complex enterprise deployments. Find more details about loading strategy in the corresponding ticket #1126.

• Server-side plugin support

  We introduced IServerPlugin. It allows adding plugins and changing server handling on demand. It's easy to write custom protocol recorder or configure session management via plugin.

• ServerContext and HttpContext

  We introduced HttpContext and ServerContext. The HttpContext allows live access to servlet request and response (if an application server is in use). It makes no difference if you use REST or standard communication. We set the right instances into the context and your application will work without specific technology checks. We also use HttpContext for JVx.mobile.

  The ServerContext is comparable with SessionContext, but it's earlier in the execution process, because it offers access to sessions directly after creation or detection. It's useful for e.g. plugins.

• Tab/Focus Index

  We introduced set/getTabIndex in IComponent. This API change allows user-defined component navigation via tabulator or Enter key.

• CommunicationException details

  It's now possible to find out the connection which throwed a CommunicationException.

• Alignment for IEditor (API change)

  It's now possible to set the alignment on IEditors instead of the cell editors. Small but very useful API change.

• Autolink with storages

  It's now possible to create automatic link references with other storage. We had this feature already in 2.0 but only for simple storages without conditions - only from clause was used. Now it's possible to configure custom storages with user-defined sort in the same LCO and set this storages as automatic link reference to other storages in the same LCO.

• Server side bean processing boost

  We change and improved server side bean handling of our AbstractStorage. Here are some numbers for you:

  ....................... Before | After

  Insert Object[] ... Beans: 200 |   0
  Update Bean ....... Beans: 900 | 200
  Update T .......... Beans: 900 | 400
  Fetch Bean ........ Beans: 600 | 200
  Fetch Object[] .... Beans: 300 |   0
  Update Object[] ... Beans: 500 |   0
  Insert Bean ....... Beans: 400 | 100
  Delete Object[] ... Beans: 300 |   0
  Delete Bean ....... Beans: 600 | 200
  Delete T .......... Beans: 600 | 300
  Insert T .......... Beans: 400 | 200

  Created Beans after processing 100 records.
  The current solution is a performance boost and using Object[] is always faster than everything else.

• Lazy blob loading

  We don't load Blobs immediate. We load it on request. This doesn't need any actions on client side but be aware of server-side handling because the value of a blob column will be RemoteFileHandle instead of byte[]. You should run your unit tests for your business logic. It's possible to disable lazy fetching, per storage with

  setLazyFetchEnabled(boolean);

  It's also possible to define the threshold for loading immediate or loading lazy. Check

  setLargeObjectLimit
  setDefaultLargeObjectLimit

  of DBAccess.

  This is an awesome new feature because is speeds up data transfer.

• Custom UI properties

  UIResource got:

  public Object getObject(String pObjectName)
  public Object putObject(String pObjectName, Object pObject)

  It's possible to add custom objects per UI instance, e.g. save custom states.

• REST services refactored

  We refactored our REST services. The implementation now works without problems and is easier to use becasue we don't need full qualified java names in the URL. We try to find the class via accesscontroller. The accesscontroller got a new method for this.

• Unique component names

  For all lovers of automated UI tests. We have unique names for all our components. It's easy to create GUI tests with tools like Selenium (web tests) or FEST (swing tests) or whatever you use

We have about 107 tickets in this release and it's not possible to explain every change in this blog posting, but be sure - it's great!

The Maven archetype should be available in the next few days, because sonatype archetype listings are not live.