The AJAX hype keeps growing. Buzzwords like Comet or RIA are on everybody’s lips. In the area of enterprise software RCP is already firmly established as a client application platform. Replacing or extending existing Rich-Client-Applications with web front-ends has traditionally required a significant investment. The Rich Ajax Platform (RAP) provides a fast-path bridge between the application development with RCP and the increasingly important Web 2.0 environment

How do I get my RCP-Application on the Web? This question is asked more and more these days. Besides pure provisioning solutions like Java Web Start there are different approaches that use Eclipse Equinox on the server and recreate the user interface using JSPs or similar technologies. This approach has the disadvantage of a reduced code reuse in the UI, since it is almost impossible to recreate the workbench concept and the familiar extension points with different technologies. This is remedied by RAP, a web-platform that can execute regular RCP applications with few restrictions. This gives developers the opportunity to take an existing RCP application and deliver it as an “ajaxified” web application with a small effort, without coming into contact with Servlets, HTML or JavaScript. With it, RCP concepts like Views, Perspectives or Wizards can be put into web applications.

The First Steps
In order to become familiar with RAP we will start by installing and starting the available demo application. To do this, we download a new RAP version from the project’s homepage [1] and unpack it in any directory. RAP is being delivered as a target platform because it will be executed on a server and cannot use the standard implementations of SWT, JFace and the Workbench. The Eclipse IDE is best started with an empty workspace so that the target does not affect other projects. We now open the Target Platform preference page (WINDOW | PREFERENCES | PLUG - IN DEVELOPMENT | TAR - GET PLATFORM) and change the Location to the eclipse subdirectory of the unzipped target. Thereafter we import the supplied Demo-Project in the workspace. Under FILE | IMPORT … we choose Plug-ins and Fragments, ensure that the project.

Download pdf Web-enabled RCP Applications with the Rich Ajax Platform RCP goes Web 2.0