Development Tools

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=50 BGCOLOR="#0099FF" TEXT="#F7F7FF" bgproperties="fixed" background="04100610egcecm.png"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#FFFFFF" FACE="Verdana" ><B>Java for OS/390 and z/OS Tips and FAQs</B></FONT><B>     |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Java for OS/390 and z/OS Tips and FAQs"><U><B>Home</B></U></A><B>   </B><A HREF="id34.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Privacy Policy"><U><B>Privacy Policy</B></U></A></div> <bR> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=190 BGCOLOR="#CCCCFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <A HREF="id25.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Introduction"><U>Introduction</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id2.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Basics"><U>The Basics</U></A></div> <div> <B>Development Tools</B></div> <div> <A HREF="id23.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Frequently Asked Questions"><U>Frequently Asked Questions</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id4.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Links"><U>Links</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id15.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="IBM Manuals"><U>IBM Manuals</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id34.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Privacy Policy"><U>Privacy Policy</U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="mailto:garyp@firstech.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="mailto:garyp@firstech.com"><U>Contact me</U></A></div> </td> <td valign="top" height=430 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> Development Tools</div> <div> I've settled on a few development tools to supplement the raw command line interface provided by USS. On this page, I'll discuss:</div> <div> <A HREF="#vajeew" TITLE="Development Tools"><U><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">WebSphere Stu</U></A><A HREF="#vajeew" TITLE="Development Tools"><U>dio Application Developer</U></A> (and friends),</div> <div> <A HREF="#ntsu" TITLE="Development Tools"><U><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Microsoft NT Services for Unix</U></A>, and</div> <div> <A HREF="#rose" TITLE="Development Tools"><U><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700c800000000.png" HEIGHT="13" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">The Rose Suites</U></A></div> <bR> <div> This page explains the desktop side of things. I use Windows 2000 Professional (service pack 3) for my desktop operating system.  There are also several <A HREF="id2.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Basics"><U>pieces on the mainframe</U></A>.  Please see the <A HREF="id4.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Links"><U>links page</U></A> for information on other IDEs.  If you have suggestions for other development tools (particularly any cool WSAD plug-ins), please <A HREF="mailto:garyp@firstech.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="mailto:garyp@firstech.com"><U>let me know</U></A> and I'll add these to the list.</div> <bR> <bR> <div>  <A NAME="vajeew"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></div> <div> <A HREF="http://www-3.ibm.com/software/ad/studioappdev/" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www-3.ibm.com/software/ad/studioa"><U><B><U>WebSphere Studio Application Developer</U></B></U></A></div> <div> This is IBM's IDE (integrated development environment) for developing java code, JSPs, EJBs, HTML pages, Ant scripts, and all kinds of java and J2EE things.  It replaces IBM's previous IDE which was called <I><B>Visual Age for Java</B></I> which itself came in several "flavors" or editions called Entry, Professional, and Enterprise.<I><B>  </B></I>WSAD is based on the IBM-developed open source <A HREF="http://www.eclipse.org/" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.eclipse.org/"><U><B>Eclipse project</B></U></A>.  WSAD is implemented as a series of plug-ins that plug in to Eclipse.  You can download a trial version of WSAD <A HREF="http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/download/product.jsp?cat=&fam=&s=p&id=SPAT-524G3S&pf=&k=&q=&dt=&v=&e=&rs=&c=&sr=1&S_TACT=&S_CMP=&presb=n&type=t&postsb=n" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/dow"><U>here</U></A>.  There are versions for Win2K, Win98, Linux, WinME, and WinNT.</div> <div> Some people say that WSAD has a steep learning curve but I haven't found that to be the case.  It is a relatively smooth transition from Visual Age for Java and there are lots of good articles on the internet and a tutorial built into the help system.</div> <div> WSAD version 4 is the current generally available version.  If you use WSAD, be sure to bring it up to the current service level and apply any of the further fixes that are appropriate.  Downloadable service for WSAD version 4.x is <A HREF="http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/download/product.jsp?s=p&pf=&type=s&postsb=&id=SPAT-524G3S" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/dow"><U>here</U></A>.  WSAD 4 is based on Eclipse 1.0.</div> <div> WSAD version 5 is available in an "early availability" edition.  Everyone except IBM calls this a <B>beta</B> version.  WSAD 5 is based on Eclipse 2.0 and has a lot of <B>nifty features</B>.  Many of these are inherited from Eclipse 2.0 but many are inside WSAD 5 itself.  In addition, a lot of little things have been cleared up from WSAD 4 to WSAD 5, such as project organization for web projects.</div> <div> I <B>really like</B> the Eclipse IDE, especially Eclipse 2.0.  It was developed by people who understand how programmers work.  In addition, a number of items are customizable utilizing a preferences dialog. Therefore, my indenting style doesn't need to fit into somebody else's idea of how indenting should look.    Since Eclipse 2.0 is open source with a lot of community input, it seems to be improving rapidly and frequently.  Eclipse 2.1 is current scheduled for release in 1Q2003 and incorporates a lot of nice features as well.</div> <div> Eclipse 2.0 supports a number of refactoring tools that really speed up and ease the refactoring process. Another nice feature is that it <B>automatically </B>cleans up compile errors!</div> <div> The other thing that  like a lot about Eclipse is that it integrates very nicely with CVS for version control.  Other SCM vendors have developed <A HREF="http://www.eclipse-workbench.com/jsp/plugin_cat.jsp?cat=151" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.eclipse-workbench.com/jsp/plu"><U>their own plug-ins</U></A> to interface with their source code management systems.  The CVS interface in Eclipse 1.0/WSAD 4 was only fair (but usable) and it has improved significantly.  Eclipse 2.1 promises additional improvements.</div> <div> The IBM support site for WSAD is <A HREF="http://www-3.ibm.com/software/ad/studioappdev/support/" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www-3.ibm.com/software/ad/studioa"><U>here</U></A>.  A good place to check for various WebSphere goodies is the <A HREF="http://www7b.boulder.ibm.com/wsdd/" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www7b.boulder.ibm.com/wsdd/"><U>Websphere Developer Domain</U></A>.</div> <bR> <div> A related product is called <A HREF="http://www-3.ibm.com/software/ad/studiointegration/" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www-3.ibm.com/software/ad/studioi"><U><B>WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition (WSAD IE)</B></U></A>. As far as I can tell, WSAD IE offers basically three things over plain WSAD:  JCA connectors, Enterprise Services, and what are called Service Flows.  Enterprise Services are a way of looking components as services.  These components can be EJBs, JCA connectors, or components that support a SOAP interface, for example. Service Flows allow you link together various services to make more complex services.</div> <div> WSAD IE  is currently at release 4.1 which is built on top of  WSAD release 4.0.3. WSAD IE uses some of the same plug-in names as WSAD except that they're actually different code.  Therefore, WSAD fixes and enhancements cannot be applied to WSAD IE.  The WSAD IE fixes and upgrades lag significantly behind WSAD and in some cases the WSAD fixes are never retrofitted into WSAD IE.  If IBM wants WSAD IE to succeed, it needs to devote more resources to development and support, in my opinion.  If I am buying a product that is more expensive than WSAD, there is no reason that I should have to wait weeks or monthds for WSAD fixes to be retrofitted.  Also, there's no reason that I should have to make explicit requests of IBM to fix bugs in WSAD IE that have already been fixed in WSAD.  Since I was unhappy with the support and since I don't use any of the features of WSAD IE at the moment, I've dropped back to WSAD. I cannot recommend WSAD IE in its current incarnation.</div> <bR> <div> Yet another related product is<B> </B><A HREF="http://www-3.ibm.com/software/ad/studioenterprisedev/" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www-3.ibm.com/software/ad/studioe"><U><B>WebSphere Studio Enterprise Developer</B></U></A><B> (</B>WSED).  This is built on top of WSAD IE. It includes a Visual Builder, an improved version of the Visual Composition Editor of Visual Age for Java.  It also supports a visual <A HREF="http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/index.html" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/index.h"><U>Struts </U></A>development environment. WSED is currently at release 5 and became available in an Early Availability (ie beta) on September 30, 2002.  I don't plan on using this either, at the moment.</div> <bR> <div>  <A NAME="ntsu"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></div> <div> Microsoft NT Services for Unix</div> <div> Back in the early days of Visual Age for Java, Enterprise Edition for Windows, one needed a way to effectively access HFS files on the mainframe from the desktop.  Today this problem is solved since SMB is <A HREF="http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/download/FCXM9A41.pdf?DT=20010119121420" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/b"><U>included </U></A>with OS/390 and z/OS. However, in the early days, there was no IBM-supported SMB server available for the mainframe. In order to effectively use the mainframe integration facilities of Enterprise Toolkit/390 for Visual Age for Java, Enterprise Edition for Windows, you needed an NFS client that connected with your USS NFS server, which IBM did provide. This allowed you to save files on the mainframe just as if the mainframe files were on any other network drive. You mapped a network drive to a certain node in the USS or in the MVS file system and then you just referenced files on that drive.</div> <bR> <div> This required an NFS client since NFS was not natively supported by Windows.  The client which I used most was something called <A HREF="http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/techresources/interop/unix/sfu.asp" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/techre"><U>Microsoft NT Services for UNIX</U></A>,  release 1.0.  It was pretty straightforward to use. There are a number of other NFS clients out there and I've tried some of them.  For shops which already license lots of Microsoft software, this seems to be the easiest and fastest way to get an NFS client from the purchasing and legal bureaucracies.  Microsoft upgraded Microsoft NT Services for UNIX and released version 2.0 which did not work well with the IBM NFS server.</div> <bR> <div> Fortunately at that time, IBM began to fully support SMB and introduced enough features to make it usable from Windows. Since NTSFU was no longer working properly, I switched over to SMB and haven't had any problems since.  You can safely stay away from NFS.</div> <bR> <bR> <div>  <A NAME="rose"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></div> <div> The Rose Suites</div> <div> I don't personally use any of the Rational tools.  However, I've worked with people who have. These are the high-end standard for object-oriented design using the UML (Unified Modeling Language) and the associated RUP (Rational Unified Process). The centerpiece is <A HREF="http://www.rational.com/products/rose/index.jtmpl" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.rational.com/products/rose/in"><U>Rational Rose</U></A>, a visual modeling tool, that lets you draw UML models and generate some Java code from them as well.  Rose is licensed most economically as part of one of the Rational Suites.  Although quite expensive by PC standards, I think the <A HREF="http://www.rational.com/products/dstudio/index.jsp" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.rational.com/products/dstudio"><U>DevelopmentStudio </U></A>is probably the best choice of the suites for the Java for OS/390 developer.  There is also a <A HREF="http://www.rational.com/products/xde/javaed/index.jsp" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.rational.com/products/xde/jav"><U>version</U></A> that integrates with WSAD. The problem for me is that I mostly use UML to examine interesting problems with hand-drawn class diagrams or sequence diagrams. I really don't have a need or desire to document an entire system using UML at this point.</div> </td> </tr></table></body>