The Eclipse Resource Management defines a set of APIs for managing file-system-based workspace resources. It provides the foundation for various other services of the Eclipse platform, ranging from editor support and resource markers to Team support and Mylyn. With the Eclipse File System (EFS) API, it is now possible to plug-in alternative file system implementations e.g. to access network file systems or other content storages. The EFS is a great thing, but does the whole world look like a huge distributed hard drive with strictly hierarchic file/folder structure? There is a lot of resource-oriented content offered over network via a variety of protocols ranging from REST-based HTTP over WS-Transfer/WS-Resource to proprietary/legacy ones. Very often the resource-based content is offered in a way that doesn't really fit to a hierarchic access pattern. There are also addressing schemata for resources, like hierarchic URIs and UUIDs that can’t be directly mapped to a file path. Looks like there is a big gap between the EFS-based access to file system content and the RESTful or REST-like universe of resources. Should we give up Eclipse Resource management and look for something else? Not necessarily. This presentation briefly describes a proposal for an add-on to the Eclipse Resource Management that tries to bridge the gap and augment the Resource Management APIs with additional standardized APIs to work with RESTful or REST-like resources. The implementation is based on EFS and requires no changes to Eclipse Resource Management. The add-on introduces a new SPI to be implemented by adapters that handle access via their specific communication protocol or proprietary client library.

1. From Hard Drive to RESTful
Universe: An Add-on to Eclipse
Resource Management
Eduard Bartsch
SAP AG
© SAP AG 2009, Licensed under EPL 1.0 1

2. Agenda
Background
Proposed Solution
Demo
Next Steps
© SAP AG 2009 An Add-on to Eclipse Resource Management 2

3. Vision: Combine the Power of Two
Worlds
Project ERP
Explorer & Co
Editors Service
Eclipse
Eclipse Remote
Remote Repository
Workspace
Workspace Resource
Resource
Compare
Resource
Resource
!
& Merge Content
Management
Problems
…
View
© SAP AG 2009 An Add-on to Eclipse Resource Management 3

4. Eclipse Workspace Resources vs. REST:
Commonalities
Both cases are about Resources as key
abstraction:
–Resource is any information that can be named
–Resources have state (that may change over time)
–Resources expose uniform interface
Eclipse
Eclipse Remote
Remote
Workspace
Workspace Resource
Resource
Resource
Resource
© SAP AG 2009 An Add-on to Eclipse Resource Management 4

5. Eclipse Workspace Resources vs. REST:
Differences
Hierarchic Content Structuring Flat Content Structuring
–Rather balanced and deep –E.g. with big amount of
file/folder trees resources beneath a root URL
Content-independent Storage (Often) Content-aware Storage
Concrete Well-defined APIs
REST is Architectural Style and
Collaboration Built-in not even a Network Protocol
–Team Provider
Collaboration out of Scope
–Merge/Compare
–Mylyn –Has to be solved on top
Eclipse
Eclipse Remote
Remote
Workspace
Workspace Resource
Resource
Resource
Resource
© SAP AG 2009 An Add-on to Eclipse Resource Management 5

6. How to Bridge the Divide?
Project ERP
Explorer & Co
Editors Service
Eclipse
Eclipse Remote
Remote Repository
Workspace
Workspace Semantic Resource
Resource
Resource
Resource File
System
Compare
& Merge Content
Management
Problems
…
View
© SAP AG 2009 An Add-on to Eclipse Resource Management 6

7. Major Idea:
Consequently Bridge Differences
Decouple Eclipse Resource Hierarchy from REST
URL hierarchy
Sparsely mount REST resources into Eclipse
Workspace
Introduce an SPI and additional Content Provider
in order to handle
–Differences between repository-specific REST
implementations
–Repository-specific and content-specific semantics
–Team & Collaboration support
© SAP AG 2009 An Add-on to Eclipse Resource Management 7

8. File System vs. Semantic File System
Normal Folder Source Repository
Resource File
Subfolder Subfolder
Semantic Folder REST Repository
Resource
Resource
Subfolder
Resource
Resource
Resource
Resource
Subfolder
© SAP AG 2009 An Add-on to Eclipse Resource Management 8

9. Content Providers as Adapters for
Different REST Repositories
<<works with>> <<works with>>
Developer
Eclipse Eclipse Content REST
Semantic
Editor/ Resource Repository
Tool Management
File System Providers
Codelines/
«represents a»
Branches/
Baselines
etc
Project/
«output» «input»
...
Folder/
Resource
Hierarchy
F( ) Resources Variants
Versions/
Revisions
© SAP AG 2009 An Add-on to Eclipse Resource Management 9

10. Semantic Content Provider Hierarchy
Content Providers
Default Content Provider
may Project
– be nested
– have own Content
File
Provider 1
semantics Content
Folder
Provider 2 Folder
Folder
Content
File Provider 3 Folder File
File File
File File
© SAP AG '09, EPL An Add-on to Eclipse Resource Management 10
1.0

11. Demo
© SAP AG 2009 An Add-on to Eclipse Resource Management 11

12. Next Steps
Further Discussions via Feature Request in
Eclipse Bugzilla:
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=29
2197
Concept Document uploaded into above Bug
Report:
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/attachment.cgi?id=15
0474
Prototype Implementation will be published soon
after ESE
© SAP AG 2009 An Add-on to Eclipse Resource Management 12