WebSphere Studio for Developing Web Applications

February 14, 2002, 01:00 AM —  ITworld — 

IBM's WebSphere Studio provides an integrated development environment
(IDE) for developing Java-language applications, especially server-side
applications. IBM recently made a preview, or pre-release, version
available for Linux developers that can be downloaded from http://www-
3.ibm.com/software/webservers/studio/preregister.html#wsadlp.

An IDE organizes your work in projects. IDEs typically include a text
editor, project management tools, a debugger, and tools to
automatically rebuild the project when you make changes. IDEs bundle
all these tools together into one integrated graphical environment. For
server-side applications, Java IDEs add tools to help create Java
Server Pages (JSPs), Java servlets, and Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs).

WebSphere Studio is now based on the same core as Eclipse -- a new free
IDE IBM plans to release as open source. Eclipse provides a framework
for plugging-in extra tools. In fact, Eclipse (http://www.eclipse.org)
defines all basic IDE functions as plug-in tools. For example, all the
support for java applications comes in the form of plug-ins, and you
can download an early version of a C++ plug-in as well.

To get around complaints about slow graphic performance in Java
applications, Eclipse uses SWT -- a custom windowing toolkit from IBM.
SWT improves performance by using native windowing system widgets.
Consequently, SWT is not as portable as Java's Swing graphic toolkit,
which is used for most Java applications. While Swing runs most
everywhere Java does, SWT for Eclipse is restricted to Linux and
Windows at this time.

SWT makes a big difference. Even with something as simple as pulling
down a menu, Java Swing applications tend to display a slight, but
noticeable, delay. This may not seem like much, but it interrupts your
chain of thought. SWT-based applications, like Eclipse, display a
snappy performance when pulling down menus.

WebSphere Studio and Eclipse aren't the only IDEs for Java development
on Linux, though. Borland's JBuilder runs on Linux and you can download
the low-end version for free at http://www.borland.com/jbuilder.

Sun's Forte is another IDE whose low-end version can be downloaded for
free from http://www.sun.com/forte/ffj. Sun also released Forte's
source code. A full version of this IDE, called NetBeans, can be
downloaded from http://www.netbeans.org. NetBeans is similar to Eclipse
in that NetBeans was designed to allow developers to plug-in new tools.

Two Java editors, jEdit (http://www.jedit.org) and Jext
(http://www.jext.org), offer IDE-like features as well.

» posted by ITworld staff

ITworld

I like it!
Post a comment
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Resources
White Paper

Symantec Backup Exec 12 and Backup Exec System Recovery 8 deliver industry leading Windows data protection and system recovery. Download this whitepaper to find out the top reasons to upgrade and how to get continuous data protection and complete system recovery.

Webcast

Data and system loss — from a hard drive failure, malicious attack, natural disaster, or simple human error — can happen anytime. Don’t leave your business vulnerable. Make sure you have a secure recovery strategy in place. Symantec's latest backup and system recovery technology can efficiently restore critical applications, individual emails and documents and even restore your entire system in minutes in the event of a loss.

White Paper

Businesses face a growing challenge to ensure that the IT environment is properly protected. Backup Exec 12 integrates with other applications in the Symantec family of products, to complement your current data protection strategy, keep your data securely backed up and make it recoverable when you need it most.

Free stuff

Enterprise 2.0 Implementation
By Aaron C. Newman, Jeremy Thomas
Published by McGraw-Hill
Learn more!

Deploying Cisco Wide Area Application Services
By Zach Seils, Joel Christner
Published by Cisco Press
Learn more!

Featured Sponsor

AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.

In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.

On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.

More Resources