using eclipse emf/gef to develop an offline designer for identity manager

Eclipse – Bedrock for Identity Manager Designer

Aditya Vikram

© 2014 NetIQ Corporation and its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.2

Agenda

• What is Identity Manager

• Designer

• Why Eclipse?

• Eclipse Tools that we use

– EMF

– GEF/Zest

– Headless Eclipse

– Eclipse plugins as “content”

• e4 Migration


Identity Manager

• Enterprises need the ability to share identity data between systems while integrating with established business processes and policies.

• Identity Manager enables policy based data synchronization and account provisioning between disparate systems, applications, and databases (data stores).


DesignerA standalone client application optimized for development & productivity for designing, configuring, and deploying Identity Management solutions

It reduces cost and risk by allowing the user to

– design and test solutions offline in a robust graphical environment,

– deploy the solution into the enterprise,

– version-control/team collaborate on the solution, and

– produce detailed documentation describing all of the details.


What is Designer ?

A standalone client application optimized for development & productivity for designing, configuring, and deploying Identity Management solutions


Architecture

Built on Eclipse

● Designer consists of a set of plug-ins written on top of the Eclipse Framework.

● Designer is an RCP application, has it's own branding. Bundles only those Eclipse components which it needs.

● Designer plug-ins have been written as a core service for other plug-ins to use.


Why Eclipse?

● Ability to work off-line

● High Performance UI

● Rich UI widgets and gestures

● Rich pre-built views & editors

● Leverage other eclipse based projects

● Powerful editor lifecycle

● Rich help system

● Cross platform

● Extensible


Some of the Eclipse Technology that we use

● EMF

● GEF/Zest

● Birt

● Headless Eclipse

● Auto Updates


EMF

● Eclipse tool that provides modeling & persistence framework for a structured data model

● Used for code generation for model.

● Pretty efficient event notification mechanism as well

● Referential Integrity is preserved with bi-directional references.

● Reference objects are always loaded as proxy until they are really needed.

● Full command stack that helps in quickly building editor lifecyle.


EMF usage in Designer

● Requirements– Version Control compatible

– Share data across products

– Extensible

– Describe relationships between various entities

– Lazy loading.

● Loosely Coupled Distributed Model– Each Entity persisted in its own file.

● Uses Event framework to notify all views, editors, cache for any updates to model

● Uses EMF Commandstack to manage editor lifecycle


Designer model


GEF

● An Eclipse tool for building rich graphical editor & views.

● Designer Modeler & Workflow Builder is based on GEF.

● Can easily be combined with EMF to build graphical editors based on the EMF model objects.


Modeler

– Model applications, connectors, data flow

– Pallette containing variety of applications

– Thumbnail view


Workflow Builder


Zest

– Visualization Toolkit

– Based on Draw2D/SWT


BIRT

– Visualization & Reporting Toolkit

– Rich variety or reports ie. Lists, charts, compound reports.


Headless Eclipse

– Eclipse without the workbench

– Some of the “monotonous” jobs can be classified as a task.

– Headless Eclipse can execute such tasks without any manual intervention.

– Used for Quick Deployment

– Validations

– Check for updates


Content as a “Plug-in”

– Designer deliverables can have it's own life-cycle.

– They can be installed/uninstalled/upgraded/downgraded

– New versions can be added.

– Dependencies can be specified.

– New updates can be shared through the Update channel.


Auto Updates

– Release of all product patches

– Release of all content patches

Questions??


Questions ??


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This document could include technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. Changes are periodically made to the information herein. These changes may be incorporated in new editions of this document. NetIQ Corporation may make improvements in or changes to the software described in this document at any time.

Copyright © 2014 NetIQ Corporation and its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

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Content as a “Plug-in”

– Eclipse without the workbench

– Some of the “monotonous” jobs can be classified as a task.

– Headless Eclipse can execute such tasks without any manual intervention.

– Used for Quick Deployment

– Validations

– Check for updates

using eclipse emf/gef to develop an offline designer for identity manager

Technology

netiq corporation

eclipse designer

eclipse framework

emf eclipse tool

eclipse bedrock

eclipse tools

emf model objects

designer plugins