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Message-Id: <79542328270D5F4BB8E29BED159D783B0326483B@gsnmp02es.ny.fw.gs.com>
From: "Lichtner, Guglielmo" <Guglielmo.Lichtner@gs.com>
To: 'OJB Developers List' <ojb-dev@db.apache.org>
Subject: RE: Mapping workbench, finally
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 11:35:04 -0400
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This is a great observation but I think that the
requirements-specification-implementation
process performs less than optimally in an open source environment.

Because the users in this case are also the analysts and the developers, if
there are
no tools available to do something it's probably because there wasn't an
urgent need.
Therefore it should be enough to just merge the existing tools and call it a
day.

You can always add to it later.

Imagine if in '91 Linus Torvalds had said "I want to write a unix clone, but
there are already
so many that I would like to have a requirements gathering phase before
implementation".

-----Original Message-----
From: Florian Bruckner (apache.org) [mailto:florianbruckner@apache.org]
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2003 10:25 AM
To: ojb-user@db.apache.org; OJB Developers List
Subject: Mapping workbench, finally


Hi,

I am crossposting this intentionally to users AND dev-list as I hope I can
get some more attention for this message. This is just meant to start the
discussion, please let us discuss these matters on the dev list.

Recently a some graphical tools popped up that all claim to solve specific
problems concerning repository mappings. It is good to see that OJB has a
growing user base and that there is increasing willingness to contribute to
the success of OJB. On the other hand it makes me somewhat sad that these
effort are all but coordinated. For example there is a plugin for eclipse
that is based on reversedb (see below), Mathias undoubtedly put in a lot of
effort to fix bugs and make the classes work for his purpose. But neither
have any bugs ever been discussed on any public mailing list nor have the
bugfixes made it back to the codebase of reversedb. The result is lost
effort on both sides and software that is less functional than it could be.

OJB currently has (and has had for a long time now) two flavours of a
mapping workbench. Reversedb is a simple (slow and buggy) application to
read a database schema and generate XML and java classes. Reversedb2 is a
rough prototype for a mapping workbench with a better design than reversedb.
Both applications suffer from the fact that design and implementation have
been made by a single person (me). The design is possibly even broken in a
way that makes it impossible to implement certain requirements.

I understand that it is a problem for a lot of people to contribute to a
piece of software where they have not been able to contribute during the
design phase and when they think they could have done better. Let's throw
away all we have and start over again.

This email should be seen as a call for a discussion. Let's discuss what the
requirements to a mapping workbench are, let's discuss the goals and how
these goals can be achieved, let's discuss who can take which role in such
an effort, let's discuss a design and let's make the best mapping tool
possible. And let's combine our efforts.

regards,

Florian


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