Xtext @ Google

Last week I had the chance to speak at the EclipseDay at the GooglePlex in Mountain View, CA, an event organized by the Eclipse Foundation and hosted by Google's Open Source Programs Office.

Google is a truly amazing company and the GooglePlex is a very exciting place to be at. As I was one day early and needed a creative place to put finishing touches on my slides, I took the chance to visit Robert Konigsberg who was kind enough to host me for that day.

The organizers put together a great agenda with lots of interesting talks. Looking at the agenda, you will see that there actually are three major topics, Eclipse in the Enterprise, Modeling and Runtime:

The talks

• Eclipse in the Enterprise: Lessons from Google
• Distributed OSGi
• Deploying Successful Enterprise Tools
• Build and Provision

all dealt with how Eclipse can be used in the Enterprise or which challenges you will face if you start using Eclipse in large-scale scenarios.

The talks

• Developing DSLs with Eclipse
• Eclipse in NASA Mission Control
• Build and Provision

either directly had modeling as their topic or used modeling technology to solve their problems. I especially liked the NASA talk which featured a number of computer animated videos of recent or future missions. The NASA mission control software is heavily based on Eclipse and technology form the Eclipse Modeling Project.

Finally, there were some talk on runtime technology:

• OSGi for Eclipse Developers
• Developing for Android with Eclipse
• Google Plugin for Eclipse: Not Just for Newbies Any More

Attending great talks of course is one of the major benefits of going to a conference like this. To me, meeting other people and connecting has become even more important than attending great talks. Of course, this is nothing new to event organizers and so there were many chances to grab a drink and chat with the other attendees. With more than 170 people attending, it was hard to have a chat with everyone, but nevertheless I managed to talk to a number of people, many of which already are Xtext users or are now planing to have a detailed look at it. Even Google is using Xtext, but ssshh!

Overall, I really enjoyed my two days at Google and look forward to more events like this. Speaking of which, Eclipse Summit Europe is approaching fast, so make sure you register on time. Also, if you're interested in Modeling and DSLs, we're organizing a Modeling / DSL Day in North America this coming fall - see my previous post for more info.

And finally, here are the slides and the video of my talk:

 

From http://www.peterfriese.de