Sun Java Studio 8 Enterprise Edition

The Sun Java Studio 8 Enterprise Edition, built on top of

NetBeans IDE, provides an extensive set of options for coding any Java

application. It is available for free if you register as a member of SDN (Sun

Developer Network). The simple installation procedure gives you an option to

select the version of JDK (you need at least JDK 5.0 Update-1).

You will first see options to include the NetBeans Mobility

pack, view documentation and the Studio. In later steps, the installer gives

options for installing Sun Java Application Server 8.1 and 'Collaboration

Runtime'. The latter is a great tool for developers to collaborate and work on

the same file. The recommended memory requirements are pretty high, with the

recommended as a machine with at least 1 GB of RAM and a P4 1.4 GHz is required.

Coming to its features, you can find a detailed set of

options for any type of project you initiate, be it a Java, J2EE or a mobile

application. When you start a new project, you can select to either import a

project from an existing Ant script or create a standard project from existing

sources. However, in case of an enterprise Java application, it must conform to

the J2EE BluePrints Project Conventions for Enterprise Applications.

UML modelling



The Studio allows developers to perform UML modeling of their projects. This

can be initiated from the New Project dialog box. Once the model is created, the

user can easily create Java classes from the class diagrams constructed,

reducing a good amount of development time. UML modeling is available in four

different flavors. One of these is the platform-independent model. The good

thing about this option is that only UML modeling rules are applied, no code is

generated and it does not apply any language related rules to the model.

Adding 'Collaborate Login Account' to configure computer for using an existing account on a collaboration server

The other options are Java Platform Model, reverse

engineering, and the Imported Rose Model. The The Java Platform Model is needed

to create code from the project model created. The third option for generating

the Java Platform Model by reverse engineering a Java project is impressive as

this lets developers view the UML model of a project in Java and then optimize

it. However Reverse engineering over here is not to be confused with

de-compilation as this option simply gives the skeletal model of the project and

does not provide any details of implementations of various methods in a class.

The final option is the Imported Rose Model, where you can import models

created in Rational Rose. This way the IDE also provides interoperability and

portability of the project models.

Collaborate on projects



The 'Collaboration Runtime' feature provided for developers allows

sharing the coding session itself during the development process. This means,

two developers can be working on the same file with any changes being made by

one of them automatically reflected on the others' screen. The Runtime also

lets them converse and login to a collaboration server and join public

conversations. To use the 'Collaboration Runtime' you need to sign up for an

account with any collaboration server of your choice, the default one being

share.java.net. The 'Add Account' wizard does this in five simple steps. The

collaboration server required is bundled with the Studio if you wish to start

your own.

In this series on Studio, we shall look at the features of

Studio and how you can use them to improve your development effort. In this

part, we will create a sample library management application and see how the UML

modeling features of the IDE can be used.

Sample application



Our project called 'Library Manager' consists of three classes:

'member' to represent a member of a library, 'librarian' and 'book'.

To start off create a new Java project from File>New Project. Choose 'Java

Application' and click on Next. Give the project name as 'LibraryManager',

a path and click on Finish. The IDE will scan the class paths and once created,

the LibraryManager project will be visible in project window.

Now create a UML project by choosing the 'Java Platform

Model' option from the same 'New Project' window. Click on Next, provide

the project name as 'LibraryUML' and give the same path as LibraryManager.

Check on the 'Generate Code' box and click on Next. Choose the

LibraryManager project from the 'Choose Java Project' window that opens and

then click on OK. The LibraryUML project will also be visible in the Project

window now. In the 'New Wizard' window that opens automatically, select

'Class Diagram' for the Diagram Type List and click on OK.

The IDE opens a modeling palette and a blank class diagram.

To add the Book class, click on the class icon from the palette and then on the

blank diagram. Right click to deselect the empty class and then change its name

to Book. To add attributes, right click on Attribute in the diagram and select

'Insert Attribute' from the menu. Rename the attribute as bookId (integer).

You will notice that the following code will be automatically added under the

Operations section.

public int getBookId()



public void setBookId(int val)

Selecting LibraryManager project for LibraryUML to provide code generation from class diagram		The 'Class Diagrams' for the project with source code auto generated from the designs

To add operations right click on the Operations section and

choose 'Insert Option'. You can change the visibility of a method from the

Properties window. For instance, to change visibility of setBookId() method to

'protected' select  that value

from the dropdown list next to Visibility in the properties window. Similarly,

add string attributes for 'bookName', 'author'; 'cabinetNo',

'ShelfNo' as integers and a boolean 'issued'.

The get and set methods will be automatically generated for

them. Change the Visibility for all set methods except the setIssued method to

'protected'.

The Member class will contain the attributes memberId,

memberName, and memberAddress. The Librarian class contains only one attribute

'fineValue', which is a static and final integer. To set it up as static and

final, check the boxes for that from the Properties window after you've

inserted and renamed the attributes as before. Now, we need to insert the

following operations. 

public void issueBook(int

bookId, Date issueDate, Date returnDate, int memberId)   



public void returnBook(int bookId)   


public void addMember(Member val)


public void addBook(librarymanager.Book val)

You can also edit the operations created by double clicking

on Operations, or by clicking on the button under the Parameters option of the

Properties window for the class whose method needs to be edited.

So far we have modeled our class. In the next part we shall

implement an interface for the library repository and creating implementation

for the interface using the UML modeling tool.

Also see how to create action diagrams for our application to model the

State Transitions of different objects during runtime to complete the modeling

phase of our Project.

Anadi Misra