Using Eclipse EMF/GEF to develop an offline designer for identity manager

1. Eclipse – Bedrock for Identity Manager
Designer
Aditya Vikram

2. Agenda
• What is Identity Manager
• Designer
• Why Eclipse?
• Eclipse Tools that we use
– EMF
– GEF/Zest
– Headless Eclipse
– Eclipse plugins as “content”
• e4 Migration
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation and 2 its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

3. Identity Manager
• Enterprises need the ability to share identity data
between systems while integrating with established
business processes and policies.
• Identity Manager enables policy based data
synchronization and account provisioning between
disparate systems, applications, and databases (data
stores).
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation and 3 its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

4. Designer
A standalone client application optimized for development &
productivity for designing, configuring, and deploying Identity
Management solutions
It reduces cost and risk by allowing the user to
– design and test solutions offline in a robust graphical environment,
– deploy the solution into the enterprise,
– version-control/team collaborate on the solution, and
– produce detailed documentation describing all of the details.
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation and 4 its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

5. What is Designer ?
A standalone client application optimized for development & productivity for
designing, configuring, and deploying Identity Management solutions
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation and 5 its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

6. Architecture
Built on Eclipse
● Designer consists of a set of plug-ins written on top of the Eclipse Framework.
● Designer is an RCP application, has it's own branding. Bundles only those
Eclipse components which it needs.
● Designer plug-ins have been written as a core service for other plug-ins to use.
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation and 6 its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

7. Why Eclipse?
● Ability to work off-line
● High Performance UI
● Rich UI widgets and gestures
● Rich pre-built views & editors
● Leverage other eclipse based projects
● Powerful editor lifecycle
● Rich help system
● Cross platform
● Extensible
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation and 7 its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

8. Some of the Eclipse Technology that
we use
● EMF
● GEF/Zest
● Birt
● Headless Eclipse
● Auto Updates
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation and 8 its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

9. EMF
● Eclipse tool that provides modeling & persistence
framework for a structured data model
● Used for code generation for model.
● Pretty efficient event notification mechanism as well
● Referential Integrity is preserved with bi-directional
references.
● Reference objects are always loaded as proxy until
they are really needed.
● Full command stack that helps in quickly building
editor lifecyle.
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation and 9 its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

10. EMF usage in Designer
● Requirements
– Version Control compatible
– Share data across products
– Extensible
– Describe relationships between various entities
– Lazy loading.
● Loosely Coupled Distributed Model
– Each Entity persisted in its own file.
● Uses Event framework to notify all views, editors,
cache for any updates to model
● Uses EMF Commandstack to manage editor lifecycle
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation and 10 its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

11. EMF usage in Designer
● Requirements
– Version Control compatible
– Share data across products
– Extensible
– Describe relationships between various entities
– Lazy loading.
● Loosely Coupled Distributed Model
– Each Entity persisted in its own file.
● Uses Event framework to notify all views, editors,
cache for any updates to model
● Uses EMF Commandstack to manage editor lifecycle
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation and 11 its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

12. Designer model
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation and 12 its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

13. GEF
● An Eclipse tool for building rich graphical editor &
views.
● Designer Modeler & Workflow Builder is based on
GEF.
● Can easily be combined with EMF to build graphical
editors based on the EMF model objects.
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation and 13 its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

14. Modeler
– Model applications, connectors, data flow
– Pallette containing variety of applications
– Thumbnail view
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation and 14 its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

15. Workflow Builder
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation and 15 its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

16. Zest
– Visualization Toolkit
– Based on Draw2D/SWT
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation and 16 its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

17. BIRT
– Visualization & Reporting Toolkit
– Rich variety or reports ie. Lists, charts, compound reports.
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation and 17 its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

18. Headless Eclipse
– Eclipse without the workbench
– Some of the “monotonous” jobs can be classified as a task.
– Headless Eclipse can execute such tasks without any manual
intervention.
– Used for Quick Deployment
– Validations
– Check for updates
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation and 18 its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

19. Content Management Life Cycle
Import
Online Update
19 © 2011 NetIQ Corporation. All rights reserved.
Install
Upgrade
Downgrade
Customize
Revert
Uninstall
Configure

20. Content as a “Plug-in”
– Designer deliverables can have it's own life-cycle.
– They can be installed/uninstalled/upgraded/downgraded
– New versions can be added.
– Dependencies can be specified.
– New updates can be shared through the Update channel.
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation and 20 its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

21. Auto Updates
– Release of all product patches
– Release of all content patches
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation and 21 its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

22. Questions??

23. Questions ??
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25. +1 713.548.1700 (Worldwide)
888.323.6768 (Toll-free)
info@netiq.com
NetIQ.com
Worldwide Headquarters
515 Post Oak Blvd.,
Suite 1200
Houston, TX 77027 USA
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www.netiq.com/communities

26. This document could include technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. Changes are
periodically made to the information herein. These changes may be incorporated in new
editions of this document. NetIQ Corporation may make improvements in or changes to the
software described in this document at any time.
Copyright © 2014 NetIQ Corporation and its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.
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27. Content as a “Plug-in”
– Eclipse without the workbench
– Some of the “monotonous” jobs can be classified as a task.
– Headless Eclipse can execute such tasks without any manual
intervention.
– Used for Quick Deployment
– Validations
– Check for updates
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation and 27 its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.