Borland JBuilder 9 Enterprise

Whether you want to write your Java code from scratch or expect wizards and drag-n-drop components, JBuilder gives you all, with added spice. While writing code, JBuilder’s CodeInsight drops down a list of suitable packages, classes, methods or variables–similar to Intellisense in MS Visual Studio. With this, you never need to search the JDK documentation for a method’s name and signatures. In any case, JBuilder doesn’t let you go wrong and marks the incorrect or misspelled code while you write it. It goes to the extent of suggesting the cause of the error (called ErrorInsight). The first suggestion is accessible on moving the mouse over the marked errant code while the others are listed in the left pane of the IDE. This means, most errors can be found out before compiling the code. For those who don’t forget to document their code alongside, there is a similar (to CodeInsight) drop down for possible Javadoc tags (called JavadocInsight).

JBuilder well integrates version control through CVS, local or remote. At any time you can add a project into the CVS, which is a matter of few clicks, and specifying some parameters. Henceforth, you get access to all versions of the file by simply clicking on a History tab. When comparing two versions, the dissimilar lines are highlighted.

Talking about the latest on the bandwagon, creating and consuming Web services with JBuilder is quite easy. JavaBeans and EJBs can be exported as Web services easily through a wizard, where amongst other parameter you specify the methods that you want to expose as a Web service. While JBuilder supports a plethora of application servers, support for following application servers has been added in the new version: BEA WebLogic Platform Server 8.1, IBM WebSphere Application Server 5.0, Borland Enterprise Server 5.1.1 - 5.2.1, Sybase EAServer 4.2.

To consume a Web service, specify the path or URL to WSDL (Web Services Description Language) file and JBuilder creates the required Java classes to reference the Web service and call its methods. We tried Web services with JBuilder using some code of our own and with samples that came with JBuilder, and were able to quickly deploy and execute them.

Using the integrated Axis TCP Monitor, we could see the SOAP request and response packets flowing during a service invocation–a useful feature to understand what is going on under the hood.

Optimizing Java code for better performance is a concern for most. With JBuilder’s OptimizeIt Suite installed, you can use it from within JBuilder to track code execution, processor and memory usage and multithreading issues.

S N A P S H O T
Price	:	Developer Edition: Rs 47,952, Enterprise Edition: Rs 168,000 per new user
Key Specs	:	Support for latest app servers; find errors before compiling; Intellisense like feature; assist in documentation; intuitive Web services wizards; OptimizeIt and version-control integration
Contact	:	Borland Software, Bangalore.
Tel	:	51154611
E-mail	:	rajiv.ranjan@borland.com

Java IDEs have traditionally been daunting because of their slow performance and responsiveness. However, JBuilder was satisfactorily responsive at 256 MB of RAM (the minimum requirement) on a P-III 933 MHz machine. But at times, opening other applications simultaneously did slow down the machine. Hence, we suggest going for the recommend 512 MB RAM or more.

The bottom line is that Jbuilder 9 is an intuitive and responsive IDE, which facilitates drag-n-drop and wizard-based development as well as the manual writing of code.

Shekhar Govindarajan