Eclipse Success Stories as Application Platforms (RCP)

Question

I continue to read about Eclipse as an application framework (i.e., the Eclipse Rich Client Platform ). I cannot find an exhaustive list of Eclipse success stories as an application framework (RCP) other than Eclipse, as a development environment that is extremely popular. I have seen customer reviews about the Netbeans platform , but not for the Eclipse Rich Client platform.

What are the case studies or success stories of Eclipse as a rich client platform in the commercial and open world?

Answer 1

Here is a list of open source products built on the Eclipse Rich Client platform: http://www.eclipse.org/community/rcpos.php

Commercial Products: http://www.eclipse.org/community/rcpcp.php

Answer 2

I can add my own modest success story using RCP as a client platform. In has a slow learning curve, but after mastering it there are huge advantages. In particular:

• The platform is neutral. It works well on windows and Linux, there are few surprises here and there, but overall this is still great.
• Built-in update management, fantastic for versions and version fixes.
• It scales perfectly, adding new features is almost painless.
• Being a platform, and not just a graphics library, it offers many advantages.

Minuses:

• Not every application complies with the eclipse philosophy and the view / editor paradigm.
• It is relatively difficult for beginners.
• This may be too cumbersome to achieve simple tasks.
• The documentation is not the best, the community is quite small compared to other alternatives.

In general, I do not regret choosing it. I personally hate network clumsy and slow interfaces. Here you have a built-in, fast and flexible graphical interface, naturally integrated with the desktop.

Answer 3

My company was quite successful in creating an aircraft mission planning system using the Eclipse RCP infrastructure. There were some troubles (mainly the fact that the new interfaces you should use are not very well documented), but it gave us a huge foot and provided a lot of useful archeology.

In many ways, we are just an editor, but instead of a text file, you are modifying a database describing a mission with an airplane, and many of the interactions are through a 3D globe displayed in the view. Data binding helps to constantly synchronize various views and editors (although problems with flows between the SWT application and third-party AWT widgets using data bindings were a nightmare that I would prefer not to review)

It was a complicated program, which was mainly attended by three developers who did not know that Eclipse was going to write in about a year. Today we are expanding it to other customers by adding additional plugins.

Answer 4

Take a look at XMind . This application is for mapping pegging on top of RCP. I know some experienced users who did not understand that this is a Java application at all. He just looks good.