Extending the reach

FOR MANY PROGRAMMERS, choosing development tools is something akin to a religious experience. Yet for IT executives who are setting the development tools strategy, the choice more often than not comes down to how well a tool matches corporate project requirements, budgets, and the expected ROI.

The latest iteration of Sun Microsystems’ Forte for Java, Version 4.0, promises to provide a positive developer experience for a variety of enterprise project types, including wireless and Web services deployments. Given its available tools and price tag (the Community and Mobile Editions are free; the Enterprise Edition costs $1,995), the IDE (integrated development environment) will likely yield productivity gains for developers while delivering a good ROI for corporate strategists.

We examined an Early Access Version of the IDE and found a few glitches typical of prerelease software. Most notably, the screen refreshed at rapid intervals at times, yet at other times the IDE was slow to respond. Company officials have indicated that the IDE will be optimized for performance prior to its production release.

These issues aside, we found this release quite solid and a must-have upgrade for existing Forte for Java customers. Developers who use other IDEs may want to examine this Forte for Java release as well, given its Web services enhancements.

We tested both the Enterprise Edition and Mobile Edition of Forte for Java on Solaris, Windows, and Linux and had equal success. On the core Java front, this release adds JSP (JavaServer Pages) 1.2 and Servlet 2.3 support as well as the inclusion of standardized tag libraries for JSPs (for more info, see the Java Community Process site at ).

Enterprise Edition users will find that support has been added for J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition)-compatible application servers, including the J2EE 1.3 Reference Implementation and WebLogic 6.1. We had no trouble deploying test applications to the Reference Implementation during our evaluation.

We especially appreciated new support in the IDE that allowed us to import code we had previously created with other tools. We merely mounted the directory that contained our EAR (Enterprise Archive) and extracted the contents of the EAR into the IDE.

IT sites that develop software on Solaris/SPARC platforms will find a number of changes in this release. For example, using Forte for Java and Forte Developer 7 (Sun’s IDE for coding in C, C++, and Fortran, also currently available in an Early Access release at www.sun.com/forte/developer ), programmers can wrap C and C++ functions and data objects and expose them as Java classes. This functionality can help developers who want to deploy legacy code as Web services.

Java and more

In addition, Forte for Java and Forte Developer 7 can be combined to draw additional performance data from Java applications as well as from those containing a mix of programming languages. A built-in performance analyzer can be used to inspect Java program performance (Java 2 SDK 1.4 required) as well as the performance of C, C++, or Fortran programs that are called from Java programs.

Enterprises that want to use Forte for Java on Linux, Windows, or Solaris to build Web services will find the going rather easy given the included tools. For example, a built-in XML editor offers code completion functionality for elements such as end tags.

Wizards are included for the generation of SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), WSDL (Web Services Description Language), and UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration) registration. We had no trouble generating WSDL for our test Web services. In addition, we were able to generate tests for our Web services and deploy to the Reference Implementation to gauge how well things were working. Moreover, in this release, developers can deploy Web services and client applications to the same server or different servers, as needed.

Wireless developers will also find a lot to like in the Mobile Edition of Forte for Java. We found the included templates marvelously easy to use, and we quickly created some test MIDlets — applications for Java-capable mobile devices.

Testing MIDlets is made easier by the inclusion of an emulator and solid debugging tools. We had no trouble using some third-party device emulators either.

Despite the typical beta release glitches, we found Forte for Java 4.0 well-suited to varied enterprise IT project requirements. In its multiple editions, the IDE addresses just about every type of Java project that enterprise IT might want to tackle. From core Java to enterprise projects, Web services, and wireless deployments, Forte for Java 4.0 appears to be up to the challenge.

Enterprises doing basic Java programming or developing mobile applications will want to download the free Community and Mobile Editions, respectively. Companies doing enterprise Java development will find the Enterprise Edition well worth a look.

Source: www.infoworld.com