EclipseCon, Day 2: Fun with demos.

So, here I am in front of 50 or so people doing my "Data Tools for Rich Clients" presentation at EclipseCon. The sample app is pretty cool -- I think -- and it was just working (no, seriously, I swear it was just working!) in my hotel room 15 minutes before the presentation. It is an RCP application that reads the song list from an IPod....

Open the app, create the connection profile, click connect and... stack trace!
So, my first thought is "Fine, this is about building RCP apps with DTP, so I'll debug and fix this live, and it will be a good lesson." Then I looked at the stack trace, and realized that I didn't have a clue what had gone wrong. So, I did the natural thing: I tried it several times more, just to be sure that is was, in fact, really, truly broken...

Then someone from the audience asks if I have an internet connection, and it hit me: the SAX parser was trying to resolve off the box. Connected to the internet, and, finally, it worked! I don't know who gave me that suggestion, but -- seriously -- thanks!