I just installed and have started working with Designer 8.0 and the Service Development 8.1 plug-in. My initial impressions are positive.
The differences between Developer and Designer will take some getting used to but so far so good.
Defining connections to IS is done in the Preferences dialog. Odd place (needed to read the docs to find out how to connect to an IS) but once there, it’s good. Easy to define all the servers quickly.
The server connection definitions can be exported and shared amongst developers. A nice touch.
Can be used to connect to IS 7.x (Developer 8 doesn’t).
FLOW services, doc types, adapter services, triggers, WS connectors, WSDs and other elements all look familiar in the editor.
For FLOW and Java services, the Comments tab is now a field on the Properties pane. [strike]This pretty much puts the kibosh on entering quality comments for the service since the field cannot be viewed in a bigger window without copy/paste into something else.[/strike] Click on the value field for comments and a button appears that when clicked opens a dialog to read/edit the comments.
Java services display quite differently. They can be debugged locally. (Yay!) Still can’t step into Java service from a FLOW service though.
FLOW services have a Layout tab, which is a return of the graphical interface that Developer dropped years ago. My first impression is that it’s a waste of time but perhaps as I get more into things a good usage scenario will emerge.
A new “Inspect Pipeline References” facility aids in refactoring efforts. After changing a document type definition, it will show where assignments, maps, or drops occur that no longer refer to a valid field within that doc type. It’s an after the fact facility (e.g. no “change all references for me”) and you still get to do the editing yourself but it’s better than the nothing that currently exists. I hope that over time these sorts of facilities will evolve and improve.
I haven’t done much real work with this tool yet but plan to start doing most/all future work with it.
I’ve test Designer 8 very few, but is worth trying, my addional comment:
Both Developer and Designer 8, has a new feature under “Properties” for “pipeline debug” quite interesting. No need to use savePipelineToFile. However one should never forget when moving to production to unselect it.
I’ve also tried the Designer serv dev 8.0. (may be not the last version)
Very happy with the integration of the java code (completion, color syntax :eek: it was time… ok after the “notepad style”, everything would have been better)
Can you create triggers in your version ? in my version I was not able to create one: “feature not yet available”.
I need to launch the Developer with the great “Launch Developer” button to create one !
Also very impressed by the “old/new” Layout view. But too bad that it can not be exported.
Screen painting is “flickery”. Clicking on FLOW steps and other elements repaints the screen far too much. The navigation panel seems to randomly scroll on its own.
When running/debugging a service the inputs from the prior run are not remembered as is done in Developer. The Save and Load buttons are still there but it would be nice if the inputs were kept from run to run.
Copy/paste of steps from one FLOW service to another does not copy all the bits. I copied a branch statement and the pasted copy left out the switch value of the branch and the labels of the children. Similarly, copying a variable from the Input tab of one service to another omitted the comments and the pick list.
Startup of Eclipse (which has never been quick) is slowwww.
I briefly tried to add custom libraries to the classpath but the preferences dialogs appeared differently from my previous work with Eclipse. I didn’t want to risk “doing it wrong” so I’ve deferred that until I review the wM docs on that.
In production you set the extended setting to not allow restore pipeline. If I remember correctly I saw this in the doc somewhere. Probably IS Admin guide for V8.
Flickering, long shot, I don´t see this on my current laptop. Though I have seen it in Eclipse earlier,
adding -Dsun.java2d.opengl=true -Dswing.aatext=true to eclipse.ini (very end) did the trick back then. But I can´t test it since I wouldn´t know if it worked.
I’ll add a feature or two: flow templates, set properties like ACL’s, caching upfront. No more copying a “template” flow.
