Tag Archives: webmethods

problems with webmethods developer/designer 8 (eclipse based)

Posted by KarlP on 7 October, 2010 2 comments

So I’ve upgraded from v7 of webmethods developer (with the custom three column sort of view) over to v8 of webmethods designer (eclipse based)

Here are the stupid, annoying, weird things that I haven’t managed to fix (yet?)

  • Entire flows are marked in grey until you check them out for editing. I don’t want to edit it, but I want to be able benefit from having a colour screen. I also want to be able to separate disabled steps. Sure, the icons are still there, but it’s all grey.
    Which steps are active?

    Which steps are active?

  • Comments on a flow are now a single line property. They used to be a whole panel of free form text. Given how awkward it is to comment the “code” any other way, and given that this is the only place to put any overall comments on the whole flow, and given how crap the VCS integration is (at least in our setup?) this box is pretty important for staying sane. yes, you can use the “…” link to get into a box editor, and i’ll probably get used to this one, but it used to be a bit easier
  • No keyboard shortcut to expand the flow. And no config setting to always start expanded. Although right and left arrows will open and close, they only open/close a single level. That’s not good enough.
  • Pressing delete on the keyboard doesn’t work for flows/folders in the Package Navigator. It does work for flow steps. Even though right click “delete” shows Delete as being the keyboard shortcut

    • Enough for now. bleh.

WebMethods Designer 8 with eclipse 3.6

Posted by KarlP on 29 September, 2010 None comments

SoftwareAG’s webmethods designer 8, the eclipse based replacement for “Developer” comes packaged into a rather old version of eclipse, 3.4. if you’d rather use it with, say, 3.6, here’s what you need to do…

Install it as it likes, then open up c:\softwareAG\eclipse\updates. This is the goodness :)

Start up your eclipse 3.6, and under “help->install new software” choose “add” then “archive” and find first of all, the com.softwareag.common.zip and install it. The feature should install happily there.

But, to install the DeveloperPlugins.zip, you need to do a bit of hackery.

Inside the zip, open up features/com.softwareag.is.feature_8.1.0.0000-0193.jar, and then open up com.softwareag.is.feature_8.1.0.0000-0193.jar (your version may differ, but it should be much the same)
Then, open up feature.xml and you’ll see the following list of requirements:

   <requires>
      <import feature="org.eclipse.gef" version="3.4.0" match="greaterOrEqual"/>
      <import feature="org.eclipse.wst" version="3.0.0" match="greaterOrEqual"/>
      <import feature="org.eclipse.jst" version="3.0.0" match="greaterOrEqual"/>
      <import feature="org.eclipse.platform" version="3.4.2" match="greaterOrEqual"/>
   </requires>

Unfortunately, org.eclipse.wst and org.eclipse.jst don’t exist anymore, they’ve been broken up into smaller pieces, and renamed.

Remove those two lines from the requires list, and replace them with this:

   <requires>
      <import feature="org.eclipse.gef" version="3.4.0" match="greaterOrEqual"/>
      <import feature="org.eclipse.wst.ws_core.feature" version="3.2.0" match="greaterOrEqual"/>
      <import feature="org.eclipse.jst.web_core.feature" version="3.2.0" match="greaterOrEqual"/>
      <import feature="org.eclipse.jst.enterprise_core.feature" version="3.2.0" match="greaterOrEqual"/>
      <import feature="org.eclipse.jst.server_core.feature" version="3.2.0" match="greaterOrEqual"/>
      <import feature="org.eclipse.platform" version="3.4.2" match="greaterOrEqual"/>
   </requires>

Save your way all the way back out, and then use this zip as a software source as before, and the new feature should install just fine :)

You may not need all three jst.XXXX_core features, but this was enough to get it working for me.

oh, You’ll know you need this, if you get the following errors when you try and install from the original .zip files.


Ack, try and get back to the initial state where this didn't work to catch the whole error message to make googling easier.