Web Sphere Studio Application Developer

See the home page at IBM: http://www.ibm.com/software/ad/studioappdev

According to IBM: "IBM WebSphere® Studio Application Developer is an easy-to-use, integrated development environment for building, testing, and deploying J2EE? applications."

See also: EclipseIde

That's great. What is it, REALLY? --BruceIde

Here's a start... WebSphereStudioApplicationDeveloper (more commonly referred to as WSAD) is IBM's commercialized IDE based on the open-source Eclipse IDE. WSAD replaces the aging VisualAge for Java in IBM's product line. WSAD adds to Eclipse by offering J2EE support, enhanced Team support (CVS and Rational ClearCase plug-ins), an embedded Test version of WebSphere, and many other "enterprise" level features. -- KenLiu

J2EE support includes creating and testing EJBs, HTML and JSP validators, taglib support when editing HTML/JSPs, GUI to assist editing of application.xml, web.xml, etc. Import/export of EAR, WAR and EJB jar files. Debugging and profiling tools, etc. Basically a consolidation of features from VisualAge for Java and WebSphere Studio. The embedded WebSphere test environment is basically the Advanced edition of WebSphere Application Server. The only down side is that the latest version is still based on Eclipse 1.0, so you will probably have to wait for the next major release to get the good stuff added in Eclipse 2.0.

WSAD adds to Eclipse by offering ... enhanced Team support (CVS and Rational ClearCase plug-ins), an embedded Test version of WebSphere, and many other "enterprise" level features.

In other words, IBM walked away from EnvyDeveloper -- measurably superior in "Team Support" -- in favor of the tired old file-based disasters that have made genuine team development in C, C++ and Java such a nightmare.

Similarly, the "embedded Test version of WebSphere" is required because IBM also walked away from the ability to do incremental compilation from within the environment. In VisualAgeJava, I could run Tomcat within the environment, set breakpoints, inspect variables, and change and compile code -- all while the server was running. This changed code was fully and automatically entered into the repository, checked for prerequisite compatibility, and protected from inadvertent loss. Now, with EclipseIde, I get a "Test version" of WebSphere -- that tosses me squarely back into the mode of writing log files so that I have to stop, analyze, check out, change, save, build, and restart for every freaking nit -- just like I had to do to C, Pascal, and Fortran code twenty years ago.

I thought Eclipse supported JvmCodeSwap? feature?

With EclipseIde, IBM has enthusiastically jumped onto the mainstream bandwagon of computer industry dilbert-speak. Oh yes, IBM now offers buzzword compliance with all the latest cool stuff. They have fearlessly left behind any hint of innovation, so that they can look exactly like all the other purveyers of dog-food. They have at least accomplished one thing: they have, in fact, demonstrated the accuracy of the IDE-bashers who complain about bloatware.

On a, possibly, brighter side, check out Stellation (http://www.eclipse.org/stellation/)

So here is, for me, the resulting question: now that Smalltalk and VisualAgeJava are dead, what toolset will the XP community -- including WardAndKent -- use to accomplish its sophisticated refactoring, test-infected development, and similar idioms? IntellijIdea is getting a lot of attention.

the current release of WSAD 4 does not totally replace VAJ. There is no GUI composition 'plugin' for WSAD 4.0, although, 5.0 which is soon to be released does have a visual GUI composition editor. WSAD 4 is basically a JAVA IDE with support for deploying to Websphere App Server. I have used it for a few months and it is a real time saver in that I dont have to hand code any deployment desciptors as I do when deploying to JBOSS. WSAD 4 is a resource hog but is based on Elipse 1.0. WSAD 5 promises to fix this also 5.0 should support incremental compilation. Also I never have to edit any log files or restart Tomcat or Websphere after making code changes/fixes as stated in the above rant. --skye

Actually Incremental Compilation isn't the issue. The system currently supports incremental compilation. What you're asking for is the ability to hot swap class files in a running debugger session. That feature is supported by JDK 1.4 (IBM had to work with Sun to make this a standard JVM feature). However, you won't be able to do WebSphere development using this feature since WebSphere (and thus the WebSphere test environment) requires JDK 1.3, even in WebSphere 5.0. So, you can code standalone clients with JDK 1.4 using Sun's JDK and WSAD 5.0, but you can't do server-side development with it.

KyleBrown