Open melodie in closed beta test

I'm glad to announce that the closed beta test of Open melodie has begun this afternoon. It was quite a rush to install everything on a Linux box in time, especially due to a few sneaky configuration bugs here and there. Having Jersey to run on a Tomcat 5.0 may be a bit tricky, I also found a very amazing bug in the way Glassfish handles the EJB Interceptors.

So we are now close to the first beta release of the code base. We'll jump directly from v0.4 to v0.7, since I dont have enough time on my hands to package a v0.5. Too bad, but the v0.7 will be the first beta release, and we are all very excited about that.

From now on, the first Internet instance of Open melodie will run, and about 5-6 good souls are going to work with it, report bugs, suggest new features, so that we can improve the product.

Stay tuned for more news as things go on.

0.5 close to release

I was planning to release a v0.5 before going on holydays, but the H1N1 cost me a good 2 weeks of work.

Anyway, the project is back on saddle, with a 0.5 version close to release. Expect some cool new features :

• interfacing with Google spreadsheet for massive indexation, but also for the creation of thesaurus ;
• image brower, handling of hires images through the interface ;
• plus the usual bunch of bug fixes and enhancement of existing features.

In parallel, a beta version of the software is going to be deployed to be used in production on a few projects. This will be the first deployment of the platform in an openned environment. This experiment is planned to start in about a month.

Open melodie 0.4 released

The fourth release of Open melodie is out on Sourceforge. One again, bug fixes, server side improvments (not much), and a lot of work on the client and its interface.

The client now exposes nearly all the item creation and indexation functionnalities. You can :

• create archives ;
• create corpuses in archives ;
• create thesauruses, controled valued sets ;
• create field types (all the defined kinds of field types are supported) ;
• add field types to corpuses, to create indexation patterns ;
• create items in corpuses and index them following the patterns for that corpus.

You can work on thesauruses and controled values sets :

• create keywords or controled values ;
• create parent / child relations between them.

There are stilll many things to expose in this interface, among them :

• representation support (esp. for very hires images) ;
• item and representation sets administration ;
• profiles support.

The server already supports these functionnalities.

Another feature that has been added is the connection to Google spreadsheets document. Open melodie is able to massively import corpuses from Google spreadsheets. Expect to see this functionnality in the next release. In this version, there is only the very start of it : a session can acquire a Google token to access the user's spreadsheets.

The next version is scheduled to be released by the end of july.

Openmelodie 0.3 released

The third version of Open melodie is out on Sourceforge. This is the third release of Openmelodie, with more bug fixes, improvments, cool new features, etc...

In 0.2, the thechnology to be used to build the web interface had been chosen : GWT. A second one had to be chosen, and I spent quite some time between GXT and Smart client. The latter got it, mainly due to better documentation, and especially better examples in their showcase. This toolbox is really amazing, and allowed me to quickly build a rather complex interface. I love the notion of Datasource built in SmartClient, even it's a bit tricky to warp a GWT server in such a DS. Once it's done, it's very pleasant to use, and works well.

Not everything is in this interface yet, let's first list what is in it :

• basic user registration,
• archive creation,
• nearly all the artefacts that can be built in an archive are active : corpuses, thesauruses, controled values set, field types. Still missing are items and images sets.

What is not in this interface : - item creation and indexation,

• set creation, and interactions with items,
• security management.

I hope to finish the next release before summer, expect to see those three last points in it. Once all this is done, the interface will be remade, with some nice design, ergonomy (I wouldnt call what is done now "ergonomy", so it wont be "ergonomy improvment").

Open melodie 0.2 released

The second version of Open melodie is out on Sourceforge. This second release includes a redesign of the transport layer to fit GWT as the underlying technology for the presentation layer. This redesign allowed me to use the exact same transport layer code in the EJB layer, the servlet layer, and the GWT layer, thus saving quite some development time.

The major difficulty of this development was not really Java related, nor GWT related. In fact it was Maven - GWT related... Everything was compiling fine, the GWT compilier was happy with all the classes it had to translate, and building a WAR file was ok too (using home made build.xml). But ... the GWT hosted mode, with a Maven handled classpath was not working at all, with very odd Tomcat exceptions. Removing the Maven classpath, and providing a hand made one fixed the issue. Oh well...

The next release is schedule for the end of the month (maybe mid-march) and will include the first bits of the GUI part. This point is the one we are working on at the moment.