Introduction

Author: Eike Stepper

CDO is a model repository and distributed shared model framework for EMF models. It enables collaborative editing of EMF models in a distributed environment, providing features such as transactions, versioning, and branching.

This document provides an introduction to CDO programming, covering the following topics:

1  Preparing the Workspace

Before you start working with CDO, you need to set up your development environment. This documentation assumes that you have a basic understanding of EMF and Java development with Eclipse and that you have an Eclipse IDE installed and configured for your applications.

The following prerequisites must be installed into the target platform of your workspace:

• The CDO SDK and the Net4j SDK are both available from the CDO Downloads page. There you find "Update Site" and "Floating Update Site" buttons, which link to p2 repositories that contain the respective SDKs.
• The EMF SDK is available from the EMF Updates page. contains the necessary libraries and tools for working with EMF models.
• Depending on what subset of CDO you want to use, you may need additional dependencies, such as database drivers or networking libraries.

Make sure to include all necessary dependencies in your project's build path to avoid any runtime issues.

Note: If you are using an IDE other than Eclipse, you will need to manually download and include the required libraries in your project's build path. At the bottom of the CDO Downloads page, you find a link to All Promoted Builds, where you can download emf-cdo-{qualifier}-Dropins.zip archives containing all necessary libraries.

Note also that CDO and Net4j, as well as EMF, attach great importance to API and binary compatibility. Therefore, you can usually mix and match different versions of these libraries. However, it is recommended to use compatible versions to avoid any potential issues. On the CDO Downloads page mentioned above, you find version information about CDO and Net4j, as well as links to the corresponding EMF and Eclipse releases.