Eclipse Ganymede RC2 Data Tools

This post is one of a number of reviews of the upcoming Eclipse Ganymede release. It has been added to the Ganymede Around the World map. Donate and become a Friend of Eclipse!

More Eclipse Ganymede RC2 stuff reviewed, more stuff to blog about, and once again something I really appreciate! I was giving a Java basics course and got to the point of explaining JDBC, iBatis and PostgreSQL. For this course, I could not get the data tools to work with my postgres (8.3.1) database install. Adding the connection and pinging the database worked, but trying to navigate the database in the data source explorer failed miserably. This might have been an issue specific to (this version of) PostgreSQL, but to me it was yet another one of those things that didn't work with Europa. It forced me to switch between Eclipse and psql/ pgAdmin to run the scripts I had created in Eclipse, copying and pasting as I went along.

With Ganymede I have not only been able to add and ping my postgres 8.3.1 databases, I was able to browse them as well! It just works (TM), out of the box (R)! Now I can also set the connection info on my SQL scripts and execute them from within Eclipse: Just right click a .sql file and select "Execute SQL Files". Excellent!! One minor remark is that I would have expected to be able to run the SQL queries from the "Run" toolbar button (the first place I went looking). I'll check and see if a bugzilla exists, and if not, I'll register it as an enhancement and see if this is something worth adding in the future.

Browsing the PostgreSQL database structure

The SQL execution engine does not understand the psql specific \i syntax for including external files, but that's understandable as these queries are fired to the database via JDBC and not via psql. The \i is something psql knows about, the server does not, nor does DTP. As I use \i for my scripts to run in the correct order, I will have to find a way around this or try something completely different. For this one I will also check and see if an "include file" (not necessarily using a \i syntax) bugzilla exists. Again, if not, I'll create one and check if people care about such a thing.

SQL editor connected to a database

Conclusion

Besides these minor usability issues, I am again pleasantly surprised by something that is working rather than not. Like I said in my previous post, I have great hopes that this release will be in many ways more mature than the Europa bundle. I am starting to become more and more enthusiastic the more I use Ganymede! Another case deserving two thumbs up!

Some other things I've already been fiddling around with are the web tools, getting Tomcat to work and run a simple web application. So for my next post I'll have a closer look into WTP and see if this time I will be more successful installing, running and deploying to "Geronimoooooo!!!!!" ;-)