JBuilder X makes Web Services visible

By Alun Williams

Posted on 23 Oct 2003 at 16:16

The Java development system from Borland has reached its tenth generation. It's X for version 10 and X, apparently, to emphasise its cross-platform capabilities...

Jon Harrison, Borland's product line manager for Java Products, described it to us as the 'most significant release of JBuilder in over two years'. Among the 100 new features or enhancements listed, the main changes relate to the user interface and improving productivity.

In the first category, you will find changes such as multiple, dockable windows for managing editing sessions; 'configurable personalities' so that the IDE can be customised for particular types of tasks (ie. those concerned with GUI development can ignore database or EJB considerations, and vice-versa); and project wide to-do lists and bookmarks.

The release will also see support for code folding, the facility whereby sections of code can be temporarily hidden, the better for viewing the overall structure of a program.

'Developers spend a lot of time in the IDE,' Harisson told us,' and we want to make it as comfortable as possible, without hiding anything.' He emphasised the two-way nature of the graphical support - nothing is hidden from those who want to drop down into code, and changes will be reflected back in the visual presentation.

For improving developer productivity, ie. turning projects round quicker, Borland has brought a visual approach to creating and consuming Web Services. Previously, the standards support was code-centric but now a drag and drop-based Web Services Designer should help simplify matters. Ditto a new Struts Designer (based on the Apache Model-View-Controller technology).

There's also TagInsight for JSP (Java Server Pages), HTML and XML to help reduce coding errors, support for JBoss (the open source application server), and an Automatic Application Quality Analyser, using code metrics to give feedback on the impact of code changes.

Note, however, that Borland has only 'announced' details of the release - JBuilder X is not yet in the shops. We can expect to see it before the end of the year.

'JBuilder X exemplifies the next-generation Java IDE,' believes George Paolini, general manager of Java solutions at Borland . 'We met with thousands of JBuilder users and surveyed hundreds of enhancement requests to make sure that we could meet the needs of today's Java developers.'

According to Paolini, one of the top developer requests was increase customisability of the IDE. 'Formerly a best kept secret at Borland, we have extended our OpenTools API, first published in 1998,' he said. 'This allows us to continue to support the ecosystem around JBuilder and offer customers additional functionality from our third-party community.'

In terms of pricing and availability, JBuilder X will ship three editions: Enterprise (for J2EE and Web services development, costing £2,350), Developer (for Web application and traditional code-centred development, £680) and Foundation, which is Free.

It runs on Windows, Linux, Solaris, and MacOS X 10.2.