2006 JavaOne Conference - 12 Reasons to Use NetBeans, Plus...

In session TS-1387, "Twelve Reasons to Use NetBeans Software: Episode 2", on May 17, Sun's Tim Boudreau, NetBeans Evangelist, Inyoung Cho, Java Technology Evangelist, and Charles Ditzel, Technologist, focused on helping attendees understand the new benefits and features that the NetBeans IDE offers developers, along with providing a sense of where NetBeans is headed in the future. Charles Ditzel summed up the purpose of the session: "We want to demonstrate the benefits of NetBeans and how it has grown, and why it's become super popular in the past year."

The presenters offered a general introduction to NetBeans and went on to explore reasons to use it. Since June of 2000, when NetBeans was open sourced, the NetBeans IDE (NetBeans.org) has logged more than 10 million downloads with a 33% increase in total downloads in the past year. NetBeans has sparked a vibrant, responsive community with more than 70,000 mail-list subscribers. It runs on all Java platforms as a full-featured Java IDE.

"NetBeans is composed of plug-ins, but we have a very good out-of-the-box story," said Boudreau. "NB offers the tools you need to do diverse kinds of development without having to add plug-ins. Finally, NetBeans is a platform so you can take out all of the plug-ins that make NetBeans an IDE, and you have a pure Java application platform that developers can deploy their own logic into to save years of development time in creating an application."

NetBeans forms the basis of a number of Sun's developer tools. Sun is open sourcing Sun Java(TM) Studio Creator after recently doing the same with Sun Java Studio Enterprise, both of which are becoming sets of plug-ins to NetBeans.

12 Reasons to Use NetBeans, Plus...

Ditzel admitted that they were unable to restrict their reasons to 12, and said, "Every time I turn around something new and exciting is happening with NetBeans. There's a tremendous amount of energy going into the community!"

So, here they are in shorthand:

Out of the Box Experience
NetBeans is fast, comprehensive, and both an IDE and a platform. It supports all of the flavors of the Java platform from enterprise to mobility, plus Jini and JXTA technology and more. It's up to date and developers can work in 6.0. It offers a debugger and profiler, a way of looking at the VM and finding out what is going on at a fairly detailed level. There are all sorts of import facilities for Ant, Eclipse and JBuilder.
NetBeans is a Plug-In Ecosystem
The NetBeans plug-in ecosystem is growing rapidly with NetBeans IDE 5.0 and 5.5, making it increasingly easy to create plug-ins. Developers can manage plug-ins with Module Manager. Update Centers make for easy and transparent end user plug-in downloads. A growing number of plug-ins are distributed through email and web sites. "The really big recent one is nbextras.org, which has a ton of plug-ins spanning a lot of territory," said Boudreau.

The NetBeans plug-in Project currently converts C# to Java software along with VB.NET. The plug-in allows you to select the code and translates from .NET to the Java language through a translator.
Developer Collaboration
Anyone who works with code as part of a geographically dispersed group knows the challenge of walk-throughs and code inspection. NetBeans offers a set of plug-ins from Update Centers for collaboration that have code-aware messaging. Users can display and execute code to others in their group. Developers can access a free server to look at the code at share.java.net or use their own collaboration server.
NetBeans Enterprise Pack 5.5 and Java EE 5 Support
Support of Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) 5.0 includes web modules and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB 3.0).

There is support for Java persistence in web EJB and stand-alone applications. It deploys to bundled Sun Java System Application Server 9 Beta and generates entity classes from existing database structures and generates database tables to form hand-written Entity classes. Entity wizards create full JSF apps or app fragments based on Entity classes. There is support for code completion and documentation for all Java EE APIs.

Cho emphasized the importance of SOA Tools and the NetBeans Enterprise Pack focusing on a few issues. "The first [thing] is XML schema tools so when you create an SOA application with a web service component application, the live XML schema may be very large. You need to visualize the relationship between the schema elements with the tool. How do I orchestrate the web services I include in my app? One way is through BPEL, Business Process Execution Language, which specifies how to do the web services orchestration. You can author, build, deploy and test your web services orchestration. A BPEL engine is integrated with the SJS Application Server 9."
Jackpot
Jackpot is available as a module in NetBeans 6 where developers can check it out and participate in the Jackpot project. Jackpot searches Java source code, correctly transforming patterns, and writes minimal changes back to source. It safely modifies the Java source code using transformations and rules, relying on javac to provide a rich semantic model of Java source code, and to verify changes. It can be extended with custom rule sets, audit operators and transformation classes.

Jackpot has numerous uses:
- Source auditing tool to detect anti-patterns (such as lint)
- "Software Archeology"
- Refactoring
- Reengineering
- Migrating applications to new APIs and technologies
Mobile Pack
NetBeans has value to those who write, test, and debug Java ME MIDP applications. Its visual MID lets the designer build the GUI using drag and drop, with screen flow design. If has MIDlet template, testing, debugging. It offers easy configuration of device resources. Users can drop in any third-party emulator, and it solves the problem of device fragmentation. The Wireless Connection Wizard enables users to quickly create Java ME client/server applications. It has Wizards for creating Java ME client and J2EE applications. In addition, there is easy internationalization support.
Great Educational Resources for NetBeans
"Every time I give a talk," said Cho, I meet educators who tell me of the great NetBeans resources available to help their students." Resources include:
- JEDI
- The BlueJ team is currently collaborating with the NetBeans team to create a new version of NetBeans, the NetBeans IDE/BlueJ Edition.
- NetBeans
- Java Passion
- JavaOne 2006 Hands-On Labs
Check out the
NetBeans site
Flash Demos
The NetBeans Profiler
The NetBeans profiler offers fast, low-overhead profiling with dynamic bytecode instrumentation. It attaches to running applications, and can monitor runtime behavior of apps for: Heap size, GC statistics, thread count, and thread state. It analyzes performance: Per-method CPU timings, Call tree, HTTP Monitoring, live data and Collected data, custom filter, as well as monitoring object creation, and offering memory leak detection. It has a Visual GC plug-in and offers JConsole integration, and includes an MBean template.
A Rich Client Platform (RCP) Technology
NetBean's rich client platform can save significant development time.

It jump-starts development by handling:
- User Interface Management -- actions, menus, toolbars
- Settings, UI, and storage
- Data Presentation, Editor, Wizards
- Configuration
- Storage Management
Matisse GUI Builder
Matisse, a 100% Java platform GUI Builder, is not unlike drawing on paper. It offers easy internationalization and an intuitive drag-and-drop GUI builder. Matisse supports resizable form, with per-platform UI design guidelines, and cross-platform layout support. It has extendable component pallets, preloaded Java Foundation Classes (JFC/Swing), and API components. Matisse is Extendable with SwingX API and import components from library, JAR, projects.

Next-generation Matisse is underway.
Java BluePrints Revisited
"Java BluePrints represent some of the best practices for working with Java EE and Web applications," said Boudreau. The Java BluePrints Catalog Projects can be imported from java.net. It offers architecture and solutions for real-life problems, Asynchronous JavaScript and XML ((Ajax)), plus a web tier with JavaServer Faces technology. It can be used for Service-Oriented Architectures with Web Services and has a business tier with EJB specification, MDB.
Application server support through plug-ins
NetBeans is tightly integrated with GlassFish and the Sun Java System Application Server. Also, developers using JBoss, BEA WebLogic 9 and IBM WebSphere 6 can also use NetBeans.
Editor Enhancements
Editor features have been added. Features include:
- Code Completion
- Editor Hints
- Navigation
- Source Tools
- Eclipse, Emacs and NetBeans keybindings
C and C++
NetBeans offers support for compiling C and C++. Sun Studio C/C++/Fortran is built on NetBeans which has added new support for C and C++ in NetBeans itself so C/C++ developers can now start to use NetBeans for development. Features include: syntax highlighting, indentation, code completion, code folding, class viewer, and more.
Best Cost of Ownership
NetBeans offers comprehensive out-of-box performance, a bundled app server, numerous enterprise design pools, developer collaboration tools, an advanced profile, and many other options, and our presenters said a lot more is coming.

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