Visions of data from the platform

It's not uncommon for people to ask me what my long-term goals for DTP are. That is, they are asking about my vision for DTP. Now, "vision" is an interesting term... Looking on Wikipedia, I find the following two senses (among others):

• a corporate long-term goal
• A visual or generic hallucination

I'll leave you to decide which category the following belongs in...

The Eclipse platform has been a run-away success, and many projects (of course, DTP) ride its coat tails. This is all well and fine, with user reasoning being something like:

• I want to use Eclipse! It's really cool!
• Hmm... I need something to work with data sources like databases....
• Well, here's DTP, and it is in Eclipse
• So, I guess I'll use that too

No problems here. DTP thanks the platform for the comfortable ride.

But my vision for DTP brings an opposite reasoning process:

• I want to use DTP! It's really cool!
• Hmm... It's built on Eclipse
• Ok, I'll use Eclipse then

Simple, no? In one sentence: I want some significant number of people to start using Eclipse because they wanted to use DTP.

Are we there today in DTP? We've worked really hard over the past couple of releases, and made a lot of progress. But, are we there yet? Honestly, no. Will we ever achieve this vision? Who knows (that's the sign of a good vision, I think), but it sure will be fun trying!

OK, I've stopped having visions...

EclipseWorld

EclipseWorld will be held September 6--8 in Boston, and there's a lot of interesting sessions planned. Based on the web site's main page, Mike certainly seems more than happy to have a talk there. :-)

For those interested in learning more about DTP, Brian Payton and I will be giving a talk on Thursday morning, 8:30 -- 11:00:

How to Improve Database Connectivity With the Data Tools Platform

Loic Julien has a talk on Thursday afternoon, 1:15-2:45:

Architect and Build High-End Data Tools Solutions

While not directly related to DTP, my coworkers Maria and David will present along with Lee Anne Kowalski:

Developing Integrated Help and Documentation for Eclipse Applications

While Eclipse offers rich support for user assistance ("help"), these capabilities are not often exploited by eclipse.org projects. The lessons presented in the presentation above can help to flatten the learning curve for those interested in leveraging the full potential of the help components in Eclipse.

Finally, if anyone is interested in meeting with me to talk about DTP, please drop me a note, and we'll set something up!