I am working on Java EE project with following configuration:
UI: Flex
JDK: 1.5
ORM:Hibernate
Database: SQL Server 2005
To add a new field in UI, I have to do many mundane steps. Let’s say I am adding a field test on page Entity then I will be doing following steps:
1. Add the test field in Entity.mxml
2. Add the test variable and getter/setter in Entity.as
3. Add the element in Entity.xsd file.
4. Run a utility class to generate EntityVO out of xsd
5. Add test getter/setter into Entity.java class with the help of EntityVO. Here Entity.java is a HibernateEntity class.
6. Add test field into Entity.hbm.xml file.
7. Add a test column to Entity Table.
Should I develop a Eclipse PlugIn to get rid of all these steps? Most important, would it be worth the effort?
I think you’d have better luck if you built some tooling that generated those files (and others in your project) in the first place. Tools that generate entire files from a single model are much easier to write than tools that modify what was originally hand-coded or created by other tools.
The best platform for such a tool is the EMFT-M2T JET Eclipse project – think of it as JSP for Eclipse. You build multiple templates that are driven by a single XML model schema of your choosing. One of the more lightweight model-driven development technologies, JET lets you focus on what you want to generate without getting distracted by UML.
The specific problem you’ve described above is exactly the kind of use case that JET is meant to address.