LABS GALLERY: Amazon’s AWS Toolkit Provides Total Eclipse Integration

As is always the case with Eclipse, installation of the plug-in couldn’t be easier. In Eclipse, I clicked Help -> Install New Software to bring up this dialog box. I then filled in the Work With box with “http://aws.amazon.com/eclipse”.

Eclipse located the items to be installed: EC2 Management, Simple DB Management and AWS Toolkit for Eclipse Core.

Once installed, the plug-in provides access to AWS configuration, as well as features such as the ability to configure remote hosts.

The first step is configuring the plug-in with your own Amazon account information.

On the local end, you need to have an Apache Tomcat installation running. (Tomcat is open source and easy to install.) You can configure Tomcat from within Eclipse.

Next you can enter some sample code. This example code just prints out information about the running server. Remember, the code will run on the server and the output will be displayed in a Web browser.

For initial testing, you can run your code against the local Tomcat installation.

When running locally, you’ll see the results of the Web page displaying the information about your local machine.

Now the real fun begins: running the code under a cluster of AWS servers. First you must configure the servers, which is easy. (Note the warning that you’ll be charged for the time the server is running until you shut it down.)