Visual Age Java Three

Anyone had a chance to try version 3.0? Any thoughts? -- GlenStampoultzis

Well, to answer my own question: I've now tried out the entry edition. It improves on a lot of the annoyances of the first version. Most of the improvements are incremental rather than radical and are aimed mostly at browsing/editing. Missing were better project support and support for versioning resources. (Although they are now visible within the browser now).

Here are some of the improvements:

There's probably more that I missed but I haven't spent much time with it yet. Overall good but I was hoping for more.

They now have 3.0 (Entry Edition) on Linux, for free download. Unfortunately the nasty problem of no Java2 support isn't due to be totally solved until Q2 2000 (!). There's still the 'technology preview' Java2 support - bu no production. Now really, this isn't a big deal for any serious developers, but it just gives people a free chance to knock IBM's Java story. I don't know why they don't just sort it out. --RichardEmerson

Wow.. Q2 2000? I didn't see that. JDK 1.3 will probably be done by then! -gs

JDK 1.3 may be shipping by then, but it won't necessarily be done. Some of us don't consider JDK 1.2 done yet. -- JohnBrewer

I've been trying to get to grips with the 3.0 Enterprise Edition. It is enormous. I've only had a chance to go near the WebSphere-related EJB/servlet stuff (my reason for using it). First impressions? The full-featured local 'WebSphere Test Environment' for EJB is excellent. The JSP Execution Monitor is also very handy (lets you step through the HTML generation in a JSP) - VA was always great for developing/testing servlets, and it just got better. The EJB-specific project tab is a nice help in organizing things, although you have to jump in and out of it a bit if you're using the auto-generated test clients and so on. The Persistence Builder stuff is complicated but manageable (although I worry about how much code it generates - could be very nasty if something ever goes wrong). All the luxurious workspace and repository features are just as you'd expect. I wish there wasn't quite such an emphasis on integration only with IBM products though. -- Anon.

Is there a way to automate the IDE through scripts? Something better than just recording keystrokes? Make your own wizards, etc.?

That is the desire that the Tool Integrator API is meant to support. There's a series of articles about the API, and a 3.0 version of the documentation (PDF) just recently went up on the web page. Until 99/12/14, the API was not available on Linux; but now you can download it from the VADD site, under "downloads". http://www.software.ibm.com/vadd - free registration required.

The incremental compiling and visual building looked like a saviour for our large project where we've been reduced to writing GridBagConstraints? by hand recently (aargh!). Unfortunately we're also dependent upon OrbixWeb? for CORBA, and it's impossible to make VAJ 3.0 for Java2 work with this. The Java2 platform IBM includes has a different version of the org.omg.CORBA classes, which don't work with the current version of OrbixWeb?. That puts us back to doing GridBagConstraints? by hand again... -- NeilGall

That's very bad. Is there no way to delete/disable them? I haven't converted from 2 to 3 yet but we also use OrbixWeb?. If it doesn't work it will mean we have to stick with version 2 and maybe even consider another IDE. Doh. -- GlenStampoultzis

Actually this problem was there in VAJ2 too! Persistence Builder relied on WebSphere stuff which contained org.omg.CORBA stuff.

The solution for VAJ2 was to create a version of the WebSphere Project without the org.omg.CORBA packages.

A similar solution will work in VAJ3 ... you probably can't remove the org.omg.CORBA from the Java libraries (these are probably locked down), but you certainly don't need to import them when importing OrbixWeb?. These packages are OMG standard and shouldn't differ between OrbixWeb? and the Java libraries.

-- RichardColley

If there's a mismatch, my distrust would turn to Orbix first. We just ditched it after a while and used something else. -- RichardEmerson

I've made some limited progress by refactoring the packages/projects to avoid conflicts. The real problem is that VisualAgeJava insists that only one "version" of a package be present at a time, but then gloms multiple packages together into big "projects". I got both IBM RMI_IIOP and the OrbixWeb? stuff to coexist by first refactoring the common packages into their own project (in which I used the OrbixWeb? version of each class), and then adding the extra classes that IBM added for its RMI_IIOP support. But this only supports JDK1.1.7. Now I need to do the analogous thing for the "Early Adopter" version so that I can use JDK1.2. And I still haven't verified that things actually work -- so far, they merely compile without complaint. -- TomStambaugh

There is a CVS tool which uses the Tools Integrator API. It's free. You can obtain it from http://www.javadude.com/vaj/ under the "Tools for 2.0 and beyond" tab. It seems functional; I've been using it for a couple of weeks now. -- BrettNeumeier

Also there's an extension thingy that comes with VAJ that uses Microsoft's sort-of de-facto standard source control APIs, that most Windows SCM products support too. So you get to kinda use SourceSafe, ClearCase, MKS, whathaveyou. Trouble is, you only get to use them (and the CVS thing, I expect) as your secondary SCM. Do your thang in Envy like everyone else, then once in a while checkpoint your code into your secondary SCM. Not ideal. -- RichardEmerson

We tried this with Version 2. The problem was that it would crack a new VisualAge edition every time you checked out a class from the SCM. What we wanted was just to export the current edition. In the end I wrote a little release tool. -- SteveFreeman

Actually, I found that the problem was with the 'traditional' checkout, change, checkin approach enforced by the secondary SCMs. If you work in an XP way, do all your changing in Envy, then go to your SingleIntegrationPoint and do your integration and testing, then do the (still tedious, but less frequent) checkpointing into your secondary SCM. This also fits nicely if some other group does the pickup from the secondary SCM and puts it out onto the production machines. -- RichardEmerson

I've just heard that IBM will be replacing ENVY with Rational's SCM, I guess that's ClearCase, as of VAJ version 4. Would an IBMer like to confirm/deny this? -- StuartBarker

I'm not an IBMer (only an ex-IBMer), but the VADD forums have been discussing this for awhile now. The closest thing I've heard to an "official" response is that IBM and Rational are working at elaborating the SCM interface to better support versioning and editioning of non-Java elements such as resources, html files, JSP files, and so on. The rumors I hear suggest that Envy/Developer will continue to be used as the Java repository, and that its most important behaviors will be migrated into ClearCase. I haven't heard any credible source say that Envy/Developer would be *removed* from VAJ -- only that the connection to ClearCase will be greatly elaborated. -- TomStambaugh

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