Friday Aug 24, 2007
The SPS Modeler plugin pack which comes along with N1 Service Provisioning System 6.0, needs NetBeans 5.5.1 and Enterprise Pack 5.5.1 beta. But, if you want to try out the SPS Modeler on Netbeans 6.0 milestone builds, here's what you can do. (Please note that Netbeans 6.0 is not a supported platform for the SPS Modeler).
1. Get hold of M10 of Netbeans 6.0 or a daily build from http://www.netbeans.org
2. Get hold of the SPS Modeler module set from here
3. Fire up your Netbeans 6.0 and open Tools -> Plugins and use the "Downloaded" tab to install the SPS Modeler. Please refer to the following screenshots for directions:
4. The SPS Modeler projects cause some exceptions to be thrown in Netbeans 6.0 due to API differences between Netbeans 5.5.1 and 6.0. To get rid of these, you will need to deactivate the Netbeans Profiler which comes along with NetBeans 6.0. Go to the "Installed" tab, select the Netbeans Profiler, right click and click on "Deactivate Module" in the context menu. Follow the steps of the wizard which pops up, to deactivate the Profiler.
Thats it! You are all ready and set to start using the SPS Modeler on Netbeans 6.0 M10 or later.
Wednesday Aug 08, 2007
Hello World! Welcome to this blog folks!
The N1 Service Provisioning System 6.0 (SPS) was released yesterday. This is a power packed release with a huge bunch of features to address the usability problems that we have always heard from our customers. We have a swanky new UI, and more importantly, we now boast of a development environment for users who write SPS components and plans.
For people who are unaware of what SPS does, here's the story.
When you buy a new PC, you sit in front of it, install the operating system, and then the applications (like OpenOffice, AutoCad, Photoshop etc.). Typically I have found that I invest nearly a complete day in getting a machine up and running with all the softwares that I need. But the situation is radically different in a Data Center (huge farms of servers which back online offerings like Amazon, E Bay, Google, Yahoo etc.). In a data center, we are talking of managing thousands of machines. And many of these servers are from different companies, and run different operating systems. How does a data center administrator manage this huge and complex setup?
Manually? No. You must be joking!
Shell scipts? Yes. Unfortunately. And there comes trouble. For shell scripts neither provide a platform independent way, are extremely error prone, need lots of tweaks, don't provide any reporting whatsoever, and are extremely difficult to maintain.
It is in such a scenario that SPS shines. SPS provides a powerful, yet, simple way to manage the complete lifecycle of servers in the data center by offering a modelling language which helps the administrator in writing deployment plans to deploy components. For example, Apache HTTP Server, is a component.
The SPS modeling language (very much a programming language for the data center) used to model the components and plans, is XML based, and till now, had only a lame text area component in the browser UI to model the components and plans. This was a major pain point for our customers since writing a comprehensive component or a plan in the text area was next to impossible. Sure, there were XML editors, but what our users needed was a development environment, not a plain editor.
Enter - The N1 SPS Modeler for NetBeans
The SPS Modeler is a set of NetBeans plugins which extend NetBeans so that it becomes a full fledged Integrated Development Environment for modelling SPS Plans and Components. Features like code completion, syntax highlighting, code folding, project support etc. which Java developers expect out of any Java IDE will now be available to the SPS Model developers. Whats more, the Modeler is also able to connect to a running SPS instance so that your plans and components can be added to SPS right there, from within NetBeans! This will provide a significant productivity boost to the SPS Users -something they have been wanting for a long time.
In a series of blog posts, I will be highlighting each and every aspect of the SPS Modeler and explaining the tricks and tips to make Modeler work for you if you are an SPS user. I leave you with a couple of compelling graphics of the differences the SPS Modeler makes to the world of SPS Modeling.
So join me on the journey to the world of SPS and Modeler!
You can try out SPS 6.0 for free! Get it from here.
To try out the SPS Modeler, please visit this link.
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