FDD Enabling Tool: FDDManager

Sun, 06/20/2004 - 10:53 — ReeceRobinson

I wanted to anounce the launch of an FDD enabling tool - FDDManager.

To find out more and download an evaluation copy go to http://www.fddmanager.com.

I am interested in comments/feedback/feature requests Eye-wink

Cheers
Reece Robinson

Open Discussion

Fri, 06/25/2004 - 16:35 — akinsgre

OK, I'm trying it...

First impressions, after about 5 minutes of use...

I like it.

Pros
1. Easy to use.
2. Since I'm new to FDD, I appreciate the interface which seems to do a good job guiding me through the nuances of the method.
3. Java

Cons
1. Closed source; bet a lot of people here would like to contribute; how about opening it.

As I was downloading, I read through the recent posts on building a tool. I'd be interested in hearing what the folks who have used, or are building other tools think of this one (in terms of feature completeness)

Does this use a proprietary database, XML or something else?

Wed, 06/30/2004 - 09:42 — ReeceRobinson

RE: OK, I'm trying it... - Open Source? XML?

Thanks for posting your quick review of FDD Manager. I appreciate your feedback.

Like you I am a fan of open source! I do appreciate all the great work of the open source community. However I am faced with the reality that product development and support costs money. I have tried to come to a compromise by keeping the license cost low when compared to the license cost of tools from many of the large tools vendors. I am exploring the future possibility of releasing core elements of the tool as open source.

There is no traditional RDBMS database in this product. I use XML for ALL data storage. The project file (*.fdd) stores all project data as XML. The reference data (i.e. Users and Releases) is stored in separate XML files. The reports provided with the tool are XSL files used to transform the project file into the HTML reports. Anyone with XSL knowledge can modify/add to the available reports. People may wish to share their custom reports with the community going forward?

Cheers
Reece Robinson

http://www.fddmanager.com

Tue, 06/29/2004 - 09:58 — bobyrne

Eclipse plug-in, non MS versions

That looks interesting and useful enough.

I'll suggest two changes that would make it more useful in a development environment like the one I run:

- Release the FDD manager as an Eclipse plugin. I see you are already using the Eclipse platform as a base.

- Release a version that is not dependent on MS operating systems. If you have written the app in Java with the Eclipse APIs then an Eclipse plugin should be usable anywhere Eclipse has been installed.

Mine is a small team, and anyone on the team may take on programmer, chief programmer or even project manager roles. It makes no sense to me to have the writing of the code and the tracking of the code in different applications if they can be in the same application.
Also my programmers prefer to develop on Linux workstations, so a Windows-only application is awkward and will not get used properly.

Brian.

Wed, 06/30/2004 - 09:43 — ReeceRobinson

RE: Eclipse plug-in, non MS versions

Brian,

Thanks for your comments. They are much appreciated.

I too use Eclipse as my development environment and can understand your point about making FDD Manager an Eclipse plugin. Consider it on the product road map! No promises as to when the plug-in will be available.

I do want to release a version that is windows independent. I just have not had the time to perform proper testing/configuration on other platforms. One reason I chose SWT as the UI platform was so I could release FDD Manager with a high quality UI on all the platforms supported by Eclipse. What distribution/version of Linux do you and your team use?

For the record the FDD Manager license is good for any platform - i.e. you can start out on Windows and later use it on Linux when that version is available etc.

Cheers
Reece Robinson

http://www.fddmanager.com

Feature Driven Development