Enterprise Applications with Eclipse RCP
Modern architectures for enterprise business applications today consist of three or more layers. The presentation layer includes the program for the end user. The service layer contains the application server, and the data layer serves as storage for the data.
In the case of an Eclipse RCP application, we are dealing with a Java client for the presentation layer. This communicates with the application server to request the relevant data for the user and to save it when changes are made.
The following image illustrates the communication paths involved:
Requirements on the Enterprise Applications
The following are a list of the requirements, which are not already covered by the Eclipse RCP:
- support of an application lifecycle
- fully automatic application update mechanism and configuration without user interaction
- flexible and configurable communication channels (remoting)
- support for session handling, authorization, authentication
- roll-dependent steering of GUI components
- configurable complex GUI components such as tables, trees, tree tables, wizards
- complex editors, which cannot be regarded as simple text editors
- data binding between GUI components and data
- support for MVC (interim saving of data on the client)
- support for error handling<
Most of these requirements must be fulfilled or rather implemented in order to develop modern, maintainable applications in a client server environment. The objective is to establish a basis free of any possible business logic that uses all of the advantages and the further developments of Eclipse RCP and which allows the application developer to concentrate fully on the implementation of the business logic and its visualisation. This basis should simplify and unify the implementation of the visualisation of the business logic.
Saros – the Enterprise Eclipse RCP Framework
We created the Saros framework in order to fulfill these requirements and thus make it possible to develop enterprise-critical applications. With it, complex applications can be built in parallel by several developers uniformly and quickly. All of our Eclipse RCP applications are built on Saros.
Do you develop enterprise-critical applications with Eclipse RCP yourself or are you thinking about using Eclipse RCP as your new client technology? We can certainly provide you with added value.
Components of the Saros Eclipse RCP framework
