
I also worked with Martin Lackner whom I knew as long time attendee of our Eclipse DemoCamps in Vienna. Martin, an Eclipse platform veteran, worked on an MDA prototype using Xtext. I had worked with the older versions 0.7 and 1.0 before and he had prepared all the nitty-gritty details in the previous week. I reviewed his DSL and probably spoilt all his fun by proposing a different, shorter syntax. We moved forward very fast. In only one day we created a technical language to define entities and aggregates, together with full editor support, code completion, validation and proper formatting. Such is the power of Xtext - I love it. If you do not know Xtext, I really encourage you to check it out. The Eclipse Xtext project has excellent documentation and many examples which provide a starting point to get your DSL up and running in no time.
Free Lunch

The two weeks I spent away from home, I stayed in a hotel. The host company refunded me 600 Euro for my expenses per week. It was a nice hotel, expensive but comfortable. The money was sufficient because I saved on food, eating in the company canteen now and then. Staying in a hotel and working all day was acceptable for the two weeks, and I enjoyed the rich breakfast buffet including bacon and scrambled eggs. But I would not like to stay in a hotel for extended periods of time. I am not a travelling person and I never worked like that. I enjoy going home after work, where connectivity is good and wireless network is free ;-)
Can PL/SQL be Clean?
At the end of the week I spoke at the Austrian Oracle User Group. The organizer had planned an event focusing on clean development and three friends had recommended me to him independently. I agreed to give a presentation but was not sure about the topic I should talk about. For talking to an Oracle user group, the first thing that came to my mind was PL/SQL, Oracle's database language. I have seen horrible pieces of PL/SQL and the question was if it can be written in a clean way? According to Michael Feathers, the author of Working Effectively with Legacy Code, "clean code looks like it was written by someone who cares." I presented his quote as first rule of clean code. Continuing the discussion I listed several books about clean code, including Code Complete by Steve McConnell. Steve said to "write programs for people first, computers second", which I defined as second rule of clean code. Following both rules it was obvious that even PL/SQL can be written in a clean way. I got good feedback on my presentation, especially that it was very entertaining, so I encourage you to check out the slides on Slideshare.
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