Riena - A New Adventure In Eclipse

The Riena project has just released it's 1.0 version recently. In this article, I'll show you how to get going with Riena by walking you through my own experiences using the project. As well as providing a little background on the project I will show how to create a UI with Riena, and run through an example of remote services. 

Some Background

First, what is Riena? I wrote an article about Riena last August, discussing how it adds a new dimension to Eclipse RCP applications by providing a more "friendly" user interface to non-engineers. But the main concept behind Riena is to provide a foundation for building multi-tier enterprise client/server application. Riena makes the usage of OSGi (Equinox) services easier by providing access to both the local and remote services in a transparent way. So, no matter where your OSGi bundle is, whether on the client or the server, you can access it the same way through Riena.

The second release of Riena is already in planning and will include enhanced features and components for the development of user interfaces and navigation.

The complete list of concepts and features in Riena are pretty complete. They include: 

• Injecting Services and Extensions
• Remote Services
• Security
• ObjectTransaction
• Stages
• Client Monitoring
• Navigation
• Look and Feel
• UI Filters
• Login support
• Custom Ridgets

Getting Started 

Now that we know a bit about the project, it's time to take it for a test drive. For this example I am using Eclipse 3.5M6. To get started there are two approaches that you can take. One is to download the full Riena target platform including Equinox and SDK from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/rt/riena/Riena-1.1.0.M5-platform-win32.win32.x86.zip.

I did that to keep my current Eclipse installation lighter. (Aside: I do that quite often, and have lots of Eclipse installations around my machine). If you just want to add Riena to your current application, you can just add the Riena specific stuff from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/rt/riena/Riena-1.0.0.zip

There is an update site available for the UI wizard.The wiki page has the wrong URL for the update site - you'll need to point to http://download.eclipse.org/rt/riena/updatesites/org.eclipse.riena.ui.templates.updatesite/

I'll be using this throughout this tutorial, so it's worth getting this included.

Full, and official, getting started instructions are available from the Riena wiki page.

Setting Up The Target Platform

First we need to specify our target platform for our application to be where Riena is "installed".This step does not apply if you have downloaded the Riena components for your current installation.

Here I have used C:\Riena as my install location: 

Clicking Finish here will set up a target definition. Now you can give the target a more friendly name

All you need to do now is to set this target as active for your current plug-in development:

Legacy

Article Resources: 

RienaExample.zip