Visual Age Java Three Point Five Gripes

I was very disappointed with the lack of integration with VSS. Its to be patched soon but ... badly done IBM! ChanningWalton

Where to start? VAJ is a wonderful environment for pure Java development. Refactoring, in particular, is a breeze. The incremental compilation is superb and the highlighting of errors is excellent.

The biggest bitch that we have with VAJ is that the integration of non-Java objects into the Envy-based repository sucks, to put it mildly. Resources are only managed at the project level, which means that if you've got extensive meta-data systems, or other changing resources, you really need a separate SCM system for it.

Combined with this is the poor support for EJB development within a team environment. VAJ keeps EJB meta-data as a non-Java object in the repository, and it's fragile. So fragile that if you have multiple developers working on an EJB group, you end up breaking it. Now, an EJB group can have more than one EJB in it... all EJBs with associations between them need to be in the same EJB group. This effectively means that you have large parts of your EJB development restricted to one person at a time!

If they could fix this (and incidentally bring up the EJB level to 1.1, or leapfrog to 2.0), I'd be much, much happier with VAJ. -- RobertWatkins

This strikes me as a java, versus VisualAgeJava, problem. I agree that it's a real pain. The rub here is the blankety-blank "strong" typing system. The envy repository approach can do fine, and I wish IBM had chosen Smalltalk as the first place to integrate non-code objects instead of Java.

Your complaints are VERY well taken, though.

Rumor has it that IBM is discarding Envy altogether in favor of a file-based repository approach (ClearCase, for example). Perhaps the squeak community can take over Envy so that we might do it "right".

-- TomStambaugh

One can share EJB development among multiple developers when using other versioning systems (RCS, CVS, etc.). It is indeed a VisualAge problem, not a Java problem (but I sure agree with you about the blankety-blank "strong" typing system). -- WayneConrad

I should make it clear that I don't have any complaints about Envy, as such. My understanding of Envy, as a stand-alone product, is that it should be able to handle the demands made above. It's the VisualAgeJava integration with Envy that has the problems, not Envy itself. -- RobertWatkins.