Sun refreshes development tools line

Refreshing its development tools arsenal, Sun Microsystems on Tuesday revealed plans for upcoming versions of Java Studio Creator and is unleashing upgrades to the NetBeans open source platform and Java Studio Enterprise.

Java Studio Creator is positioned as Sun’s easy-to-use visual tool for building departmental applications. An upgrade planned for next spring, code-named “Thresher,” will add support for “market-leading” application servers, according to Dan Roberts, group manager for developer tools marketing at Sun. Presumably, that would mean BEA Systems WebLogic Server and IBM WebSphere. Java Studio Creator now includes the Java System Application Server from Sun.

Thresher also is to feature “significant” usability enhancements and the ability to add JavaServer Faces components to the user interface, Roberts said. The upgrade also will feature published APIs for additional plug-in modules and features from the NetBeans 4.0 open source platform, which was announced on Tuesday. Version 4.0 highlights include J2SE 5.0 language features, Apache Ant backing, a Java technology performance profiler, refactoring capabilities, and additional mobile development support.

Prior to Thresher, Sun later this month will release an update to Java Studio Creator that features a preview version of a capability to consume EJB used in corporate applications. Sun in adding the ability to access EJB is not changing the target audience of Java Studio Creator, Roberts said. Adding this capability enables users to interoperate with back-end services built by enterprise developers, he stressed.

“To get to that business logic and play within their enterprise, even a corporate developer has to be able to interoperate there,” said Roberts, differentiating between corporate and higher-level enterprise developers.

“This is a large release for us, with a whole host of updates [and] minor usability enhancements,” Roberts said.

With NetBeans 4.0, Sun is stressing the maturity of its open source IDE. “NetBeans is the foundation technology and platform for all of our Sun tools line. It’s a well-tested, mature technology that we’ve been using for many years,” Roberts said.

Downloadable on Wednesday at www.netbeans.org/community/releases/40/, NetBeans 4.0 features support for metadata, autoboxing, and generics.

“Out of the box, you have a complete development environment,” with no need for plugging in various other components, said Roberts. Version 4.0 is based on Apache Ant, the “de facto standard for build systems,” he said.

“By integrating our project system entirely with Ant, it makes it much easier for developers to integrate their system and team environments,” said Roberts.

Code refactoring in Version 4.0 is based on Project Jackpot, which provides a deeper understanding of what is going on in an application. “It identifies issues for you around contextual problems as you’re moving things” in the development process, Roberts said.

MIDP2 (Mobile Information Device Profile) support is featured for mobile development of applications for cell phones and PDAs.

Sun next spring plans to release NetBeans 4.1, featuring support for EJB and Web services development. Also planned is a profiler for gauging memory consumption. NetBeans 4.1 technologies are available in an early access program now.

Sun’s stance on merging the rival Eclipse and NetBeans open source Java technologies remains the same: There are no plans to do this, Roberts said.

“We are firmly behind the NetBeans open source initiative,” he said. “We are committed to our platform and we are committed to improving our platform.”

NetBeans, which has an installed base in the hundreds of thousands, offers advantages over Eclipse, Roberts said. “Out of the box, you have a complete development environment for all of Java, J2EE, J2SE, [and] J2ME, whereas in Eclipse you really have to build it yourself,” he said. He cited functionality such as EJB support, application profiling, Web services capabilities, and Swing support. 

With Java Studio Enterprise 7, shipping on Tuesday, Sun is emphasizing team-based, “Code-Aware” collaboration capabilities. “I can have conversations with multiple people at one time,” said Charles Beckham, Sun architect for Java Enterprise Tools, in demonstrating the product’s IM and ad hoc collaboration functions.

UML 2.0 capabilities in the product enables reverse-engineering of code as well as offering built-in design patterns and UML diagram features for communications. Web Application Framework and refactoring functions in Version 7 are intended to enhance productivity. An Application Profiler identifies performance issues prior to production deployment.

“Gang of Four” patterns support provides for common use cases of patterns implemented in large enterprises, as opposed to providing a blank screen to start the modeling process, said Chris Atwood, software director at Sun. Also featured is performance tuning and refactoring.

As a special promotion to entice users of competitive tools to move over to the Sun platform, Java Studio Enterprise 7 and Java Studio Creator are priced in a bundle at $995 per year per developer, including updates and premium-level support, when migrating from a competitor’s offering.

Java Studio Enterprise also is available at a $5 per employee license for current users, or $1,895 for a perpetual seat license.

An early user of Version 7 touted its team collaboration capabilities. “It’s very presence-aware,” said Marc Maselli, CEO of Back Bay Technologies, a systems integrator and consultant for capital market and insurance concerns. “You can see who else is in the environment.”

Developers can see who else is working on a file and communicate with them, Maselli said. He also gave a thumbs-up to a “round-trip engineering” capability enabled by UML, saying it saves developers from a lot of extra work. “If you change the code, it will change the design; it will go back and update the design,” Maselli said.

Version 7 does require probably a gigabyte of RAM to run it on a laptop, he said. “You need lots of memory to run it fast, but that’s kind of the case with all of [tools like this],” said Maselli.

“You need a good laptop to run it efficiently,” said Maselli.

The Sun Studio 10 tool, for C, C++, and Fortran development on the Solaris 10 OS, is due to be released next month concurrent with the release of the OS. It features compiler performance improvements of as much as 60 percent, according Sun.

Although tools such as Java Enterprise System and Java Studio Creator cost money and NetBeans does not, Sun officials stressed the value-added differences in the commercial products when questioned why a developer would pay for tools when capabilities for development are available for free.

“The answer is the level of productivity that we’re putting into our commercial tools,” Roberts said.

Java Studio Creator’s visual development environment, with drag-and-drop capabilities, is not available in NetBeans, while Java Studio Enterprise features such as UML modeling, application profiling, and collaboration also are not featured in the free platform, Roberts said.