Academia is all about writing papers. If you ask a person in academia about his/her current activity you will most likely hear something like: “I’m writing a paper”. In some cases, if the person works in the field of natural sciences you may also encounter answers like: “I’m conducting a complex experiment. I’m running it in the lab and it will take a couple of weeks to finish”. What experiments are for natural sciences are software prototypes for computer science. These are usually special (single:-)) purpose pieces of software, designed to support the claims authors make in their papers. For the most part, this kind of software is – euphemistically speaking – not exactly user-friendly. Thus, basically only the authors know how to install and run it. To illustrate this, let’s take a look at the steps needed to install Genesis 2 (a scientific prototype) in Eclipse:
G2 Eclipse Installation Tutorial
0. Prerequisites
Subclipse plugin – download here
Groovy Plugin – download here
Eclipse Version 3.3 or newerYou can skip the first two steps if you already have installed Groovy and Subclipse
1. Install subclipse
2. Install Groovy
3. Add a new project from the subversion repository
4. Open the workspace directory and go to the Genesis2 directory
5. Move up a level and create a directory Genesis2BE and a directory Genesis2FE
6. Copy the conf file to the Genesis2BE directory and open it with a text editor
7. Change the port number in the conf file to your preferred port
8. Copy the conf fileto the Genesis2FE directory and open it with a text editor
9. Change the port number in the conf file to your preferred port .Note that this port number must be different from the
10. Edit the location of tools.jar. This location of the jar file depends on your OS.
11. Open the Run configuration and create a new java run configuration. Name it Genesis2 FE
12. The main class should be named at.ac.tuwien.vitalab.genesis2.Genesis2
13. Select the (a)=Arguments tab and Point the working directory the the Genesis2FE directory (e.g., /Users/martintreiber/Documents/Genesis2BE)
14. Save the run configuration and create a new one named Genesis2 BE
15. Select at.ac.tuwien.vitalab.genesis2.Genesis2 as main class
16. Select the (a)=Arguments tab and Point the working directory the the Genesis2FE (e.g., /Users/martintreiber/Documents/Genesis2FE)
17. Enter “-fe” as “Program arguments”
18. Save the run configuration
19. Select Genesis2.java in the src directory (package: at.ac.tuwien.vitalab.genesis2) and start it with the Genesis2 BE run configuration
20. Select Genesis2.java in the src directory (package: at.ac.tuwien.vitalab.genesis2) and start it with the Genesis2 FE run configuration. A groovy shell will open and now you can work with Genesis2. Congratulations! You now have officially passed the Genesis2 “elktest” and nothing stands in the way between you and your PhD.
Code samples of Genesis2 services can be downloaded [here] and a tutorial for the creation of Genesis2 plugins can be downloaded [here].
I think we can safely assume that any normal human being would lose their minds reading this installation guide. However, if you are determined to use this software for your PhD thesis, you have to overcome this obstacle. After all, you are writing a PhD thesis – so the software installation should also be worthy of a PhD 
.
But, don’t get me wrong: the Genesis 2 software is really great and solves a couple of problems in the service community. And while it also introduces a couple of new ones on the way (e.g. by its complicated installation ), once you get it running, it’s really fun to work with. The irony of the whole story, as I might add on a final note, is that its actual aim is to SIMPLIFY the testing of service oriented systems.
your ikangai university team
PS: The tutorial is constantly being updated (also with pictures ) to help users through the installation process. There is also an Apache Ant file that helps you installing the Genesis 2 framework. After all, at university, too, we take user friendlyness seriously .
