JDeveloper from Oracle

[Hareesh Ram Chanchali]

I am using JDeveloper from oracle

Can u express ur ideas and ur rating about the JDeveloper

[Robert Hayes]

What version are you using?

[Hareesh Ram Chanchali]

oracle 9i
It is the version I am using

[Robert Hayes]

In my opinion, JDeveloper (at least the later versions like 905.1035 and 905.1618) is one of the most under-rated IDEs out there. The 10g preview version looks even better because the dev team is very responsive to its user community. I think a lot of Java developers don't pay any attention to it because it's from a "Database Company", and it's not free (like Eclipse). That's too bad, because it has a lot of RAD features for J2EE development that rival the Eclipse/MyEclipse set-up.

The only real problems I've had are with its TopLink integration, and its refactoring capabilities. On the first count, I've been in contact with both the TopLink product manager at Oracle, and the TopLink team-lead for JDev -- OUTSIDE of a TAR. I thought this was fairly remarkable... but anyway, they plan to have some of those bugs ironed out for the 10.1.3 release this summer.

Refactoring improvements were a no-brainer and those are already in the preview release of 10.1.3.

[Nart]

Hello,

Seeing JDeveloper mentioned here just reminded me of how much i hate, and cannot tolerate this IDE. On the surface looks all capable and handy, but after using it for like months now (forced to unfortunately, 10g version, would use IDEA if i had the choice) i just have to wonder, do the oracle dev guys actually develop code in this thing or use it?

Things like its oh so descriptive errors message of "internal compiler error" when doing a full build are really pathetic. Issuing errors and complaining about missing libraries and jars when re-building a project you just built successfully 5 minutes ago is handy too! And to solve these bugs, you just have to restart it... :roll:

And how about the ability for re-format code??!!

Any kind of productivity this product could possibly offer is washed away by its unpredictable behavior and (apparently) random bugs. The only buggier thing must be NetBeans in its < 3.4 days with NPE's all over.

They shouldnt have tampered with JBuilder's code too much... actually they shouldnt have even bothered licensing the code to begin with!

Yeah i'm ranting but i really lost much time trying to use it.

Nart

[ February 14, 2005: Message edited by: Nart Seine ]
[ March 27, 2005: Message edited by: Nart Seine ]

[Robert Hayes]

Nart, what version are you using (10g includes about 3 versions)? What J2EE server are you deploying to? And what apps are you developing? (JSP, JSF, servlet, POJO, struts, EJB etc?) Are you using any Oracle specific technologies like BC4J, ADF or TopLink?

I've been using production versions for almost 2 years now and have never had an "internal compiler" error. I've also never had a wishy-washy dependency problem that wasn't ClassLoader related at runtime. Then again I've stayed away from BC4J, ADF and UIX... (maybe your bane?)

As for code formatting, go download some plug-ins... like Jalopy.

[Rob Clevenger]

Oracle developers do use JDeveloper, daily in fact. I'm sorry to hear that you've had some bad experiences with it.

The 10.1.3 developer's preview release has quite a bit of new features (refactoring for example), and is quite stable. I personally haven't seen an internal compiler error in a number of years (since 9.0.3), and would be interested in hearing specificly what you have ran into. If you are interested, my email is robert dot clevenger at oracle dot com. Please email me.

As for reformatting. Jalopy works quite well (both the open source version and the commercial version from triemax.com that Marco (the original developer of Jalopy) has started. I currently maintain the open source version of Jalopy. Also, the upcoming release of JDeveloper should have code formatting included with it. It's one of the things we are working on right now.

Also since you mentioned Borland's code, that's all been removed for a couple of years (since 9.0.2).

Thanks,
[ March 10, 2005: Message edited by: Rob Clevenger ]

[Ta Ri Ki Sun]

I feel your pain Nart.
However we're not really forced to use it at all, only to have it on our machines, and do the routine upgrades that recently cost me a day. One particular problem was that our ApplicationModuleImpl sub-classes has methods that return other sub-classes of ApplicationModuleImpl and casted to the correct type so instead of returning an instance of ApplicationModuleImpl or the interface, it returned MyAppModule for instance. JDev found this unacceptable, and renamed all the return types, forcing a cast when used, not a big problem I'll agree, but this project is huge, so way too many of these small little problems are annoying.
Anyway I haven't used JDev in maybe 2 years, I can't get IDEA paid for so I use eclipse instead. Some compromises are made sure, but I'm happy with my choice.