Wavemaker

You may have seen the press release this week regarding WaveMaker 5.1.  Many of you have been using 5.1 for awhile.  In fact, I blogged about 5.1 at the beginning of June.

Since we’re on the subject of 5.1, I thought I should inform you all about 5.1.1.  As you probably guess from the release number, this is a bug fix release.  You can see the full list of 5.1.1 fixes in Jira.  The primary addition in 5.1.1 is Debian\Ubuntu packages, both 32 bit and 64 bit.  Download links are available, http://dev.wavemaker.com/wiki/bin/view/WM5_Documentation/Dev+Builds.

We continue our efforts to provide regular releases to the community.  We are actively working on the 5.2 release.  Our 5.2 work is heavily biased towards the cloud.  We will launch the second beta of the hosted version of WaveMaker Studio.  WaveMaker 5.2 will including both the hosted Studio configuration as well as the on-premise version, which most of you are using.  Both version will enable you to easily deploy your application to Amazon EC2 from the Studio Deployment page.  We’re also improving our web services and security capabilities and, of course, we’ll provide bug fixes.  I’ll provide more information on 5.2 later this month, as we get closer to the release.

The winners have been picked for the WaveMaker Developer Community Survey we just did!

Tom M. is the winner of the Sony PSP
Fernando P. is the winner of the iPod Shuffle
Peter M. is the winner of the $50 Amazon.com gift certificate

Congratulations, winners! We will be contacting you to get you your prizes today.

Thank you to everyone for participating!

WaveMaker 5.1.0 is now available for early access to the community.  We plan to provide regular updates to WaveMaker, making new features and bug fixes available on a regular basis.  In WaveMaker 5.1 we’ve made WaveMaker easier to use and more intuitive.  

The first thing you’ll notice is that we reorganized the widget palette.
- More groupings with fewer items within each group, making it easier to find the widget you’re looking for.  Alphabetical order within each group.
- Editors are a new separate section.  You no longer need to drag an Editor widget then set its display property.  If you want a Number editor, drag it directly from the palette.

Next, take a look at the Property Inspector.  Each property and event has a ? on its right.  We’ve documented each property and event and integrated a help system within WaveMaker.  The documentation comes from the WaveMaker wiki so you must be online to see the documentation.  We also cleaned up the properties, including the removal of unnecessary properties.

The bind dialog has been improved.  We started by improving the type matching system.  In the Simple mode the list of bind sources is much shorter because unmatched types are not presented.  You can still go to the Advanced mode an bind any value.  There’s also a type validation flag.  The green check mark shows that bind source and destination match.  The red x show that the types do not match.  The Expression mode provides an expression builder, which will make it much easier to build expressions with the proper sytax.  You can still type your binding expression directly if you prefer.

Finally, we added binding diagnostics.  Click the Source button then the Diagnostics tab. You will see a diagnostics area that shows all bindings within the project.  This information can be quite helpful to follow the flow of activities within your application.

Most of the ideas for these improvements came from WaveMaker users.  Thanks very much for providing the input and suggestions.  Please keep the ideas coming.  We’re doing our best to implement as many of the ideas as we can.  Feedback on WaveMaker 5.1.0 will be greatly appreciated.  Please let us know of any problems you encounter.  If bugs are found we plan to fix quickly and deliver to the community.

The 5.1.0 download page is here.

I’m pleased to announce the General Availability of WaveMaker 5.0.0.  This release reflects a major effort on the part of the WaveMaker engineering team and community. The community has been actively involved in the release and the Engineering team has worked tirelessly to deliver nearly 500 new features, improvements and bug fixes.

WaveMaker 5 also reflects a stronger commitment to open source.  We have changed the open source license for the WaveMaker Rapid Deployment Framework from AGPL to Apache version 2.0.  This means that applications you build with WaveMaker Community Edition can be deployed under the Apache license.  The Apache license is very open with few restrictions.

WaveMaker requests that you include the “Powered by WaveMaker” logo somewhere in your application, but you are not required to do so.  Many WaveMaker widgets include a new “attribution” style to make it easy to add the logo to your application.

We’ve made changes to WaveMaker Enterprise as well.  Role-based access control remains an Enterprise feature.  In addion, LDAP authentication and commercial database support (Oracle, DB2, and SQLServer) are available only in the Enterprise Edition.  In general, integration with traditionally commercial products requires the Enterprise Edition.

WaveMaker 5.0 makes it easier than ever to build and deploy web applications.  You can now build a database-driven application in 3 simple steps: (1) import your database, (2) drag a business data widget onto your canvas, and (3) press run.  It’s really that easy.

See earlier posts, WaveMaker 5.0: It Takes a Village and What’s Next for WaveMaker, for a longer list of the new features or, better yet, download WaveMaker 5.0 and see for yourself.  You can download WaveMaker 5.0 here: 

Finally, I want to thank the Dev Build Club, the Beta1 users, and the Beta2 users for their time, effort, and feedback on pre-release versions of WaveMaker 5.0.  They provided wonderful feedback to these pre-releases.  Many of the nearly 500 features, improvements, and bug fixes originated from the community suggestions.  The 5.0 release is far better for their efforts.  To see details of the bugs, enhancements, and new fetures in WaveMaker 5.0, go to jira.wavemaker.com.

Please let us know what you think of WaveMaker 5.0.

If you’d like to learn more about building applications with the open source Postgres database and WaveMaker, there’s a free webinar coming up this Thursday at 11am PDT. More details here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/974001737

Earlier this week I received a nice complement from one of the WaveMaker 5.0 beta users.  He said “you have to be proud of your ‘baby’ (WaveMaker).”  He’s right; we are proud of what we’ve created.  We released Beta1 last week and Beta2 today.  As we near the GA release of WaveMaker 5.0, I’ve been thinking about the child rearing metaphor for software development.  Let me alay any fears that I’m not going to compare releasing software to child birth. I am unqualified to make that comparison.

I am qualified to compare delivering a software product to raising a child.  Both require nurturing and direction, overcoming difficult challenges, and adjusting to new situations, demands, and interests.  Both also require input from people beyond those immediately responsible.  I’ve always liked the expression “it takes a village to raise a child.”  This concept applies quite well to software as well.  We at WaveMaker owe a great deal of thanks to our “village” of users.  Just as children are influenced by many people beyond the parents, the WaveMaker software has been molded and changed by our community.  Most recently the Dev Build Club took early builds of WaveMaker 5.0 and helped form it into a solid Beta through their bug reports, improvement suggestions, and general feedback.  I am grateful for their contributions.

WaveMaker 5.0 has a number of improvements, the highlights include:

• Welcome Screen - The first thing you’ll notice is a new Welcome screen.  As before you see your projects but you also have clearer access to documentation, screencasts, demos, and the community.  Although it’s a beautiful screen, you see less of it because WaveMaker automatically opens the last project you edited.
• Menus - New menu organization following standard practices.  Find what you need quickly.
• Palette organization - The palette is more powerful than ever.  Nearly everything you want to do can be initiated from the palette.  More space has been allocated to the palette so you can find what you need more quickly.
• Larger Model Tree - The model tree has more space allocated to it, enabling you to see the components and structure of larger projects and pages.
• Business Data Widgets - List and Detail view of your database created by draging the Business Data Widget from the palette.  Easily extend to display and edit related data.
• Composite widgets - define your own widgets, including behavior and properties exposed by the widget, and publish to your palette.
• Templates - define your own templates and publish to your palette.
• Simplified sizing - adjust height and width.  Manage sizes using pixels or percentages.
• Performance - improved performance for applications that contain many widgets.

As you start to use WaveMaker 5.0 you find many other improvements.  Download the beta and see for yourself. 

More information than ever is available in our community.  In addition to targeted forums, beta documentation, and screencasts, you can see our bug tracking database as well.

Please continue to provide feedback on WaveMaker.  We need your input to enable WaveMaker to grow and reach it’s potential.

Derek

A long time friend who runs a construction business has a twist to the classic remodeling adage. He says it can cost at least twice as much and take at least twice as long as you thought to complete the work. Developers often warn against comparing software to physical buildings. Their reasoning is sound enough, but I will suggest this is a maxim worthy of exception.

Last Friday, the first 5.0 ‘dev build’ installer packages went out to our community ‘dev build club’, a group any community would be proud to call its own. Getting those initial packages out the door certainly took longer than anyone here might have guessed.

WaveMaker 5.0 introduces some very cool new features. Derek has led a yeoman effort on documenting these features and changes in the the WM 5.0 documentation. Moving from 4.x to 5.x is a bit like a kitchen remodeling. Some things are rather different looking. Developers get more of the screen real estate for the canvas, for example. However, a service variable is still a service variable. That is, we may have moved the kitchen sink, but it still functions like a sink, and carrots still do not spotanesouly vanish.

We’ve received some excellent feedback on the dev builds. A big, big berdankt to Niek, aka Malamut, for his comments, bug reports, and suggestions. To further abuse the remodeling analogy, the dev build users are helping us ferret out potential mint green and harvest gold 1970s remodeling nightmares in the making. Thanks to everyone participating the dev build process!

Grazie millie also go to Tom, Philip, AlanB, Rolando and the other members posting their custom widgets, integrations, and templates.  They’ve developed some really neat stuff  and we’ve accordingly expanded the ‘Show n Swap‘ section of the wiki to better show case these gems. It’s been really rewarding to see folks hit that eureka moment in their development efforts. Provisioning those results back to the community site has enabled others to build on top of those successes and resulted in even more shouts of “eureka.”  As the community develops momentum, it is developing more than cool code samples, it is also developing teamwork.

The next 5.0 dev build is to go out in the next few days. We shall see if we have a few more inadvertent orange and tan shag lined cupboards to um, paint before we can open up the release. Hey, colorful shag seemed groovy at the time. Right ?

This brings us to to one project analogy that I believe few, if any, would argue with. Any project is more rewarding to work on and the result more exciting when it is done as a team.

MuleSource, the leading open source enterprise service bus, just recently posted this video to their community site - mulesource.org.  If you’re interested in quickly creating a web-based UI to front a MuleSource application, that’s exactly what Paul Jasek does in this 5-minute screencast.  He uses web services, Mule APIs and deploys to Tomcat.

http://www.mulesource.org/display/COMMUNITY/WaveMaker

High res video: http://www.wavemaker.com/screencasts/MuleSource-WaveMaker_Demo_v1.mov

Source files: http://www.wavemaker.com/screencasts/wavemaker-mulesource_demo.zip

As you might have guessed, Information Week’s “Startup 50″ will feature 50 startups nominated and voted on by Information Week readers and ultimately selected by Information Week’s editorial staff. Winners will be announced in the April 13th edition of Information Week.

If you get a chance, please stop by http://informationweek.2009top50startups.sgizmo.com/ and vote for your top 5 favorite startups!

Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s Winter Survey.  We received a ton of great suggestions, comments and feedback. Extra thanks to those who provided descriptions of their applications, challenges and projects. As with many surveys, some results are expected while some are enlightening.

We were really impressed by both the large number and the wide range of interesting applications community members are building and deploying.  Mapping, tracking, dashboards, planning, monitoring, financial applications, company/group/club/band websites, mashups of all sorts and more, they are all being built with WaveMaker. The dev community is building some very cool stuff. If you should like to share a link to, screenshot of, or otherwise share more about your application with the community, drop me a line at community@wavemaker.com.

Many responders indicated that they were still learning and we heard many good suggestions on improving the learning process. The need for training was loud and clear and we will begin offering training sessions on the upcoming 5.0 release.

The screen cast tutorials are clearly liked, a lot.  So watch for more screen casts on the wiki going forward.

A good number of you indicated that you’d like to see more documentation. Let’s just say that is one outcome we might have guessed. Several of you also indicated that you’d like more opportunities to contribute to the community. This is wonderful to hear. In a yeoman’s effort, Derek has moved the documentation in the wiki. Meanwhile we’ve been opening up the wiki, enabling community users to contribute to its development.  Laurels and accolades to Sliipzinn and the others who have already signed up to help out with the wiki documentaton efforts.  If you would like to contribute to the wiki, drop us a line at, you guessed it, community@wavemaker.com.

So who won? In my mind, first prize goes to the community. Your input and contributions help advance WaveMaker studio and runtime in the directions that enable you to be successful.  Roadmap discussions on the forums, such as those by Ramzi and Matt, further help determine what the wave ahead might look like.

Who won the Wii ?  The development team helped to determine the winners. Let’s just say they were pretty engineer like in their process. I think prime numbers and differential equations were involved.

And the winners are:

Cmorinico - iPod Nano

Jandro_es - iPod Touch

Faaokcxiao1 - Wii

Congratulations to the winners, thanks to everyone who responded to the survey and extra big thanks to everyone who volunteered to contribute to the community. Keep those questions coming. Keep on posting your tips and tricks, but most of all: keep riding the Wave.