Java development tools duke it out for biz apps

Setting corporate standards for development tools can be a lot like herding cats. Most software developers are quite particular about which tools they use. Some developers prefer coding with a text editor, such as VI or Emacs on Unix or WordPad on Windows. Others like the productivity boost provided by the aids available in IDEs.

The good news is that there is a wide variety of development tools available today that can fit almost any budget. Thus business leaders do not need to confine developers to one tool. In fact, providing a smorgasbord of aids often helps developers do their best work.

Many development tools can be downloaded and test-driven for a trial period. If your developers try a tool and determine that it’s useful, then adding it to the corporate toolbox is probably a good idea. Naturally, the same goes for the many fine tools available free of charge.

We recently test-drove two leading IDEs: Sun Microsystems’ Forte for Java 2.0 Internet Edition and Oracle’s JDeveloper 3.2. We found the two environments to be very useful for creating Java-based business applications and observed that each allowed us to load and work with existing code with ease.

To measure our success with these tools, we decided to build the same e-commerce applications using each environment. In addition, we created the same set of applications using a text editor to determine the possible productivity gains that developers might find by using the Sun or Oracle IDE.

Sun’s Forte for Java

We loaded the Internet Edition of Sun’s Forte for Java on a Windows 2000 machine to create our e-commerce applications. We also loaded the Community Edition of Forte for Java on Solaris and Linux machines to examine how development on these platforms might be performed with Forte. The basic interface experience is the same regardless of the platform on which you use Forte.

Forte for Java’s interface makes good use of scarce screen real estate. Initially, it opens to fill approximately a quarter of the screen; then depending on whether you are editing, browsing, running, or debugging, additional, task-specific windows open on the remaining portion of the screen.

For example, if you are running an application, the execution and output windows appear. In contrast, if you’re browsing, you will see the object browser properties and explorer windows on your screen.

Building our e-commerce applications was straightforward using the Forte for Java interface. It compared favorably to our experience with Oracle’s JDeveloper and to other tools, such as CodeWarrior and JBuilder.

In particular, we liked the built-in support for creating and editing XML files, the easy access to data sources, and the support for Java Servlet 2.2 and Java Server Pages (JSP) 1.1 specifications. We were able to complete and deploy our e-commerce applications quickly.

Developers will find several timesaving measures in the Forte for Java IDE. For example, you can create applications, servlets, and JSPs from templates if you like. Available editing support includes useful features such as color-coding and code-completion functionality.

Developers should also take note that support for transparent persistence, which is based on the Java Data Objects standard, is included in this release. Among other things, developers can leverage transparent persistence to create Java-based persistent objects from database schemata or add persistence to existing Java objects. Developers may also leverage transparent persistence support for Java Query Language to access data more easily.

If XML support is what you need, Forte for Java is up to the task. It automatically parses XML files in the presence of a DTD (Document Type Definition), and it includes an XML-specific editor that makes modifying code a breeze.

Although we usually prefer to use a text editor to write code, we had to admit that Forte for Java was faster than our usual hand-coding methods. Although our measurements were admittedly unscientific, Forte for Java required approximately 20 percent less creation-to-deployment application development time than did our usual text-editing methods.

Oracle’s JDeveloper

Next, we turned to Oracle’s JDeveloper. The Oracle JDeveloper IDE is part of the company’s Internet Developer Suite, which includes not only JDeveloper but also tools for modeling and design, forms creation, reporting, portal building, and more. If your company needs a group of tools to support Java, XML, and SQL development, the Internet Developer Suite will round out your toolbox nicely.

As we did with Forte, we installed JDeveloper on a Windows 2000 machine to create our e-commerce applications. However, we were not able to install JDeveloper on Solaris or Linux. Unlike Forte, JDeveloper is supported only on Windows NT and Windows 2000.

JDeveloper is based on JBuilder technology licensed from Borland. Solaris and Linux developers will find that JBuilder does support these platforms. However, JBuilder lacks a number of the useful tools provided by Oracle in JDeveloper, particularly those that simplify the creation of business logic.

Platform support aside, we found JDeveloper to be on a par with Sun’s Forte for Java. We especially liked how easy it was to locate and work with the various portions of our projects. JDeveloper includes some simple and useful elements such as iconic representations to differentiate file types — for example, SQL, XML, and Java. The interface is easy to navigate, and productivity boosters, such as code-editing aids, are included.

But where JDeveloper really shines is in the creation of business logic. This is significant because, whether you’re building Web or wireless or internal business applications, creating the logic that runs on the middle tier can take up the bulk of your application development time line.

Included in JDeveloper is Oracle’s Business Components for Java, a server-side framework that makes it easy to create and reuse components. For example, developers might choose to create business logic to access and update a particular database, and then use the Business Components for Java framework to create different SQL views of the same data for use in other applications. We felt that Business Components for Java really helped to speed up the development of our e-commerce applications.

As does Forte, JDeveloper includes quite a few aids to help developers needing XML support. Syntax highlighting and code-completion aids, in particular, will prove to be time-savers for developers. An XML parser is also included.

In this version of JDeveloper, Oracle has enhanced support for XSQL by including templates that allow developers to assemble XML as a result of SQL queries. An XSQL servlet provides accessibility to XSQL-based applications for Web clients.

When all was said and done, using our unscientific method of comparison once again, we found that we were able to create e-commerce applications roughly 15 percent faster using JDeveloper than we could coding by hand. We believe the biggest gains resulted from using Oracle’s Business Components for Java.

Making the choice

Either of these tools would be a good addition to the corporate development toolbox. Forte for Java is well suited to Solaris or Linux users concerned with keeping costs down. For developers sharply focused on middle-tier components, JDeveloper is a good choice.

Source: www.infoworld.com