Sun ONE Studio 3 is a terrific editor and an excellent place to start as you search for an appropriate IDE. You may have heard of Forte for Java. This was an IDE created originally by NetBeans. Now that Sun is engaged heavily in promoting its Sun ONE ( Open Network Environment) platform, it has folded many of its technologies and services under one umbrella. Throughout this book (and on the Sun Web site), you will see the terms Sun ONE Studio 3 and Forte for Java used interchangeably.
Sun ONE Studio 3 is an excellent starting place for beginning Java developers. The Community Edition, shown in Figure 6.3, is free and has numerous features built in (including a version of the Tomcat container for running servlets and JSPs). It can be installed on Solaris, Windows , and Linux. The IDE is intuitively organized and offers a terrific price to feature set ratio ”getting many of the advanced features, especially Web app features, in other IDEs can be expensive.
There are some disadvantages to working with this IDE. Sun ONE Studio 3 consumes a surprising amount of resources. It is slow to start up and can be slow to execute commands, even on a comparatively powerful workstation.
Overall, you will certainly want to download Forte and poke around. Even if you do not ultimately make it your editor of choice, it is a must-see attraction on the road to Java.
You can download Forte for Java for free from wwws.sun.com/software/Developer-products/ffj/buy.html. An open source version of Forte for Java and other languages is also available from www.netbeans.org.
System requirements below are for the Community Edition. They are significantly higher for the Enterprise Edition.
Windows NT 4 SP6, Windows 98, Windows 2000 SP2
Pentium II 350 MHz minimum, 450 MHz recommended
128 MB RAM minimum, 256 MB recommended
110 MB hard disk space
Red Hat Linux 6.2
Pentium II 350 MHz minimum, 450 MHz recommended
128 MB RAM minimum, 512 MB recommended
128 MB paging/swap space
110 MB hard disk space
Ultra 10 minimum, Ultra 60 360 MHz UltraSPARC II, or SunBlade 100 500 MHz UltraSPARC IIe recommended
128 MB RAM minimum, 512 MB recommended
128 MB paging/swap space minimum, 512 MB recommended
110 MB hard disk space
These are the major features of the Community Edition of Sun ONE Studio that distinguish it from other IDEs.
Complete feature set, free. This IDE is both free and it has many of the features you'll need as you're getting started in both Java programming and Java Web applications.
Web app support. It allows for rapid development of JSPs, servlets, and tag libraries, all of which are created with templates. It's easy to build .war (Web application archive) files and deployment descriptors.
XML support.
Templates. Forte comes with a number of templates, which can be used to create beans, classes, forms, JSPs, forms in Swing, servlets, and more.
Easy database access. This is achieved with Transparent Persistence using JDO (Java Data Objects).
Interoperability with JNDI, LDAP, RMI, and CORBA.
Form editor. It is easy to visually create forms for AWT (Abstract Windowing Toolkit), Swing, and JavaBeans. If you have used Visual Basic, it's not quite that easy, but a wizard simplifies this otherwise tedious code writing task. Compare this feature with the Design view in JBuilder.
Upgrade to the Enterprise Edition to get support for features such as J2EE (EJBs), parallel development with code management software on Windows and Linux, iPlanet integration, and Web services creation.
Here are a few tips and tricks that might make working with Sun ONE Studio 3 easier or enhance your understanding of the environment.
Some users object to the way that the IDE windows interoperate . By default, the interface is divided into several different panels, and it can be hard to keep track of all of them in your task bar. You can change this setting by choosing the Single Window version on installation. If you change your mind later, you can run the setup wizard again by going to Tools > Set Up Wizard.
If you experience performance problems, you'll find that Forte performs faster with fewer modules installed. In the setup wizard, choose a custom module set, and install only what you think you'll need.
This is a nice time saver as you work through example programs: In Forte there is a shortcut for writing System.out.println(); , which can be time consuming to type over and over. On a new line in the editor, simply type sout and hit the space bar. Forte takes care of the rest.
Top |