Developer Break: BIRT, PhoneGap, Qt 5.2, Aerogear, Hoya, Hunk & XDK

Catch up on the smaller but important notes for developers, from libraries to APIs and from people to posts. In this edition: a new version of the Intel XDK, Peter Kriens' return to the OSGi Alliance, early plans for Qt 5.2 and a new version of business intelligence and reporting tool BIRT.

Open Source Libraries and Tools

• One component of the Eclipse Kepler release is an update to business intelligence and reporting tool BIRT. Version 4.3 includes connectors for MongoDB, Cassandra and POJO.
  

• Version 2.9, the final 2.x release, of Apache Cordova distribution PhoneGap has been released. The next major release is scheduled for 19 July.
  

• With work on Qt 5.1 gradually drawing to a close, Digia is starting to plan its objectives for version 5.2. Changes will include a new QML engine, full Android and iOS support and support for touch-controlled devices in Quick Controls.
  

• There have also been minor releases over at AeroGear. Whilst, for example, version 1.1 of the JavaScript library includes a new Notifier plugin, the development team behind the iOS edition report improvements to the login function and support for one type of HTTP authentication.

Commercial Tools

• Hortonworks has unveiled Hoya, a prototype for using HBase on YARN. The Java tool takes in a cluster specification, persists the information in the form of a JSON document in the Hadoop Distributed File System and generates configuration files based on the passed configuration directory.
  

• Software house Splunk has released a beta version of Hunk, used for exploring, analysing and visualising Hadoop data.

• A new version of the Intel XDK, including a new drag and drop interface, is now available. The chip manufacturer's cross-platform development kit can also now be used to develop apps to run on the Tizen operating system.

Good Readings

• Peter Kriens is back at the OSGi Alliance, where, following an absence of more than a year, he will dedicate himself to putting together a foundation for OSGi web applications. Prior to his departure, Kriens was a director of the Alliance and played a major role in developing the OSGi framework.
  

(fab)