Difference between VisualAge and Websphere Studio

[John King]

I'm looking for a IDE for both J2EE with Websphere App Server and J2SE development.
Which one is better? VisualAge, Webshpere Studio, or JBuilder? Thanks.

[Kyle Brown]

Visualage is being replaced by WebSphere Studio. It will not be extended or updated any more. Nearly all of the features in VisualAge have been moved into WebSphere Studio, at least in the upcoming WebSphere Studio 5.0 release.
Kyle

[John King]

Kyle:
I found the Websphere Studio Enterprise Developer
is for J2EE, but it is still in beta.
Can we use Websphere Studio Application Developer
V4.03 to develop J2EE components?

[Ron Ditch]

Yes, 4.03 is just fine. Make sure you download the fixpacks.
The key features that I have found to be really impressive from VA are the outline perspective, the real instane of WAS inside WSAD, and the ease of development.
The cons of using WSAD 4.03 are that the debugger does not highlight the execution block as finely as VA. I expect the debugger to back to VA snuff by the next release. Also, there are times that WSAD just suddenly decides to grab 40 MB of memory and completely locks up until it has enough.

[Shalini Komarla]

Well, we are currently using WSAD 4.01 and have found it to be very buggy and SLOW. Is see that you have mentionted WSAD 4.03. Is that a lot better as compared to WSAD 4.01?

[John King]

Thanks Ron.
I got the trial version of WSAD4.0.3, but
could not find the tutorial for building
EJB with WSAD. Where can I find the doucment?

[Kyle Brown]

The tutorial is in the help perspective of the product. Also, take a look at ftp://ibm4me:[email protected]/Miscellaneous/GettingStarted/WSStudio-BillHahn-TutorialDemos-HANDBOOK.pdf
This thread also gives WSAD tutorial information.
Kyle
[ September 15, 2002: Message edited by: Kyle Brown ]