JDeveloper

[David Ulicny]

What is the main difference between WebSphere Studio and JDeveloper?

[Nicholas Cheung]

I dont think there are much different in fact. Depends on the preference of usage and the server you wanna deploy, you could make the choice.

But I love IBM's WSAD more because IBM tries to update it very frequently. When JSF comes out, it releases WSAD 5.1.2 which support JSF. Also, there are lots of plugins for Eclipse.

Nick

[Robert Hayes]

I have not used WSAD (yet). But I have used JDeveloper for almost 2 years now. If you have any specific JDeveloper questions I can probably help.

[kalpana Kumar]

Few advantages of jDeveloper
JDeveloper makes light work of otherwise tedious tasks. We were easily able to create container-managed persistence (CMP) entity beans by reverse-engineering existing database tables into a UML model compatible with any JDBC-compliant database. The built-in visual UML modeler supports two-way code generation, so changes you make in a model are reflected in your code and vice versa.

JDeveloper includes Oracle's Business Components for Java (BC4J) framework, which provides business-tier building blocks that eliminate some tedious coding tasks. Using wizards to create BC4J facades for our beans, we set up design-time business logic facilities, such as building and debugging components and setting up validation rules, simply by editing dialog boxes that manage the underlying XML-based metadata.

Thanks

[Nicholas Cheung]

JDeveloper makes light work of otherwise tedious tasks. We were easily able to create container-managed persistence (CMP) entity beans by reverse-engineering existing database tables into a UML model compatible with any JDBC-compliant database. The built-in visual UML modeler supports two-way code generation, so changes you make in a model are reflected in your code and vice versa.

These features are also supported in WSAD 5.1 as well.

Seems to me that those IDEs tries to provide features that as similar as possible. When a vendor provides features X, the rest will follow.

Nick

[David Ulicny]

BC4J - what is it? Can you provide some link?
Could it be useful for non Oracle developer?

[David Ulicny]

Seems to me that those IDEs tries to provide features that as similar as possible. When a vendor provides features X, the rest will follow.

WSAD could also provide special features for iSeries access, like WebFacing. I don't think that Oracle will run on iSeries

[Nicholas Cheung]

Could it be useful for non Oracle developer?

Non-Oracle JDeveloper might be used to develop BC4J, however, I dont think this feature can work without OAS, becos it is private to OAS.

Nick

[Nicholas Cheung]

WSAD could also provide special features for iSeries access, like WebFacing. I don't think that Oracle will run on iSeries

This case is just similar to BC4J.

But for general features, which I assume every AS and its IDE can support, they should be supported for all IDEs.

Nick

[Pradeep bhatt]

Originally posted by David Ulicny:
BC4J - what is it? Can you provide some link?
Could it be useful for non Oracle developer?

You can the samples here.
http://www.oracle.com/technology/sample_code/tech/java/jsps/index.html

[Pradeep bhatt]

Good link here
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/ids/daily/feb12.html

You will find more articles at http://otn.oracle.com

[David Ulicny]

Thanks for help.

[Nicholas Cheung]

Thanks Pradeep .

Nick

[Pradeep bhatt]

I would like to warn you that BC4J is properitary framework.
My experince with it has not be good.

It has J2EE design patterns implemented in it, so it could be useful for newbies to develop enterprise applications.

[David Ulicny]

Could you explain your experience a little bit more, please?

[Nicholas Cheung]

BC4J is properitary framework

I feel those frameworks are not really good, it makes us painful for migrating with other systems.

I havent used BC4J, however, I used WSBCC before. It based on XML framework to work on J2EE 1.2 systems. However, when I tried to migrate it with another system, the context info passing, the data access, and the swap between 2 frameworks have many conflict. And we finally need to write a RequestProxy making use of IBM's classes, NOT standard J2EE classes.

Thus, I dont like using those properitary frameworks.

Nick

[Pradeep bhatt]

Originally posted by David Ulicny:
Could you explain your experience a little bit more, please?

First of all, there is a learning curve associated with BC4J. The documentation is pretty bad. (Oracle needs to work on documentation) The BC4J jsp tags are pretty difficult to understand and use. Many of our business requirements could be implemented by BC4J. Don't seem to remember what.

Has Oracle stopped promoting BC4J ? Does any one know? I havent seen any mention of BC4J in recent articles published by Oracle?

[Nicholas Cheung]

First of all, there is a learning curve associated with BC4J. The documentation is pretty bad. (Oracle needs to work on documentation) The BC4J jsp tags are pretty difficult to understand and use. Many of our business requirements could be implemented by BC4J. Don't seem to remember what

This happens to most of the properitary framework, becos only people who paid for would get access.

In addition, does anyone hear Portal To Go before? It seems that Oracle has promoted this for portal applications, however, it seems disappeared as well.

Nick

[David Ulicny]

I used WSBCC before

What is WSBCC?

[Pradeep bhatt]

Originally posted by Nicholas Cheung:

This happens to most of the properitary framework, becos only people who paid for would get access.

In addition, does anyone hear Portal To Go before? It seems that Oracle has promoted this for portal applications, however, it seems disappeared as well.

Nick

Oracle Portal is very much alive .

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/ias/portal/index.html

Sun has a new JSR for portal, so it likely to stay around.

[Pradeep bhatt]

Originally posted by David Ulicny:


What is WSBCC?

WebSphere Business Components Composer

[David Ulicny]

WebSphere Business Components Composer

What is it good for?

[Pradeep bhatt]

Originally posted by David Ulicny:


What is it good for?

Looks like IBM no longer supports this product.
http://www.webspherepro.com/wpdocfinder/all/buscomp/buscompcomposer.cfm

[Pradeep bhatt]

I would like to correct myself. BC4J is still available but now as ADF

http://www.oracle.com/technology/books/pdfs/jdev_samp.pdf

[Nicholas Cheung]

Sun has a new JSR for portal, so it likely to stay around.

But seems IBM's Portal server might be much popular.

Again, most stuffs shift to IBM, like DB2, WAS over others.

Nick

[Nicholas Cheung]

What is it good for?

It is purely a XML framework for Web Tier application presentation, and processing. However, it is very difficult to use, and not really friendly for developers.

Nick

[Nicholas Cheung]

BC4J is still available but now as ADF

Just a change of name.

Nick

[Robert Hayes]

Originally posted by Nicholas Cheung:

Just a change of name.

Nick

ADF is an application development framework (more like Spring). BC4J was very data-centric -- although it could hook into Swing and JSP (functionality which mysteriously disappeared in JDeveloper 10G for UIX).

[Nicholas Cheung]

In such sense, seems that Oracle is trying to make their framework more flexible for application plugins. However, how popular does this framework being in use?

Nick

[Robert Hayes]

Originally posted by Nicholas Cheung:
In such sense, seems that Oracle is trying to make their framework more flexible for application plugins. However, how popular does this framework being in use?

Nick

If you read Rod Johnson's latest "J2EE without EJB" you might find it amusing how much code JDeveloper/ADF generates

I spent about 2+ hours with some Oracle reps a while back re: ADF and -- although I applaud Oracle for trying to make a developer's life easier -- proprietary frameworks just don't cut it for me; even under the guise of a JSR (which ADF is/was). And why UIX? So I share your sentiment re: popularity. If these tools weren't Oracle derived, then maybe there would be more interest -- but Oracle is a DB company after all.

[Nicholas Cheung]

If these tools weren't Oracle derived, then maybe there would be more interest -- but Oracle is a DB company after all.

That's true, in fact, many vendors are making up their own frameworks with certain solutions.

Nick

[Pradeep bhatt]

A single tag of Oracle UIX explodes into huge amount of code.

[Nicholas Cheung]

A single tag of Oracle UIX explodes into huge amount of code

Should this depend on how much work you wanna the tag to perform? Not necessary to be really huge? I dont know.

Nick

[David Ulicny]

Again, most stuffs shift to IBM, like DB2, WAS over others.

Why is it? Is IBM so much better than Oracle?

[Nicholas Cheung]

I guess IBM is currently dominated the market on Application Servers and Servers (AIX, xSeries, etc), and they provide some promotions, like give a great discount on DB2 for those who buy their WAS on their servers.

In such sense, no one (or less people) are willing to pay for Oracle if they have such offer. Thus, I guess that's might be one of the reasons that Oracle also developed their own OAS.

Nick

[Pradeep bhatt]

The problem with Oracle AS is that it is not a stable product.IBM WAS is a stable product ,so it sells.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Pradeep,
WAS has bugs too though. I think a lot of it is using the same company for an IDE and app server.

David,
Strictly speaking a J2EE compliant app server is a J2EE complaint app server. IBM provides a lot of extensions. I think Oracle does too. It's more a matter of preference than "better."

[Nicholas Cheung]

WAS has bugs too though. I think a lot of it is using the same company for an IDE and app server.

I feel, among all existing AS, WAS is the most stable one (although I am not sure whether it is with the less bugs ).

IBM provides a lot of extensions. I think Oracle does too. It's more a matter of preference than "better."

As said, if you use OAS 9i already, you may consider to use its upgrade because you might already make use of some *private* means for your J2EE applications (even through it is not recommended).

For example, as one of our systems uses WSBCC framework, and we now need to have a mix with WSBCC and J2EE, thus, we need to find some ways to pass the session (non-http) data info from WSBCC to J2EE. Thus, we need to extend some classes offered by IBM. If we move the J2EE applications on OAS, it will totally not work. Thus, we need to pay effort for AS migration.

Nick