JGear: When standard Eclipse is not enough

Michael J. Rozlog

BANAGLORE, INDIA: We have all been part of projects that could use a little help.  Sometimes, the integrated development environment has limitations that hold back one or more members of the team.  These limitations might manifest themselves in various aspects of a project’s lifecycle, or the needed functionality is just not part of the tool being used. 

The adoption of standard Eclipse over the past couple of years has been exciting in many ways.  Developers now have a standard set of tools that are readily available and for the most part, they are Free.  Of course, there are commercial products that are built on the Eclipse framework including products from BEA, IBM, and the new JBuilder 2007.  However, many products that have a great feature set are usually outside the budget parameters of most companies. This however does not eliminate the need for having specific tools for a project, which is where CodeGear comes to the rescue.

With the introduction of the JGear products, CodeGear has made key functionality normally only found in the full JBuilder products, available to users of Eclipse 3.2 based IDEs.  This includes both the competition’s (MyEclipse 5.5, BEA Workshop 10.1, and IBM Rational Application Developer 7.0) and base Eclipse Callisto (3.2) packages.  This is a great step forward, because there are many times in a project where a certain functionality or feature would make delivery of the software easier, and potentially shorten the timeline.

The first JGear is named Performance.  This plug-in is really needed by any Java developers doing serious development.  There is not a day that goes by that comments like “the application is slow” or “this thing (application) is a memory hog” or “I wish I could figure out why this program is locking or freezing.” If you or someone near you has spoken these words, then most likely you need a performance profiler.  JGear Performance includes five (5) major tools. 

The first being the memory Profiler, which gives insight to object instantiation, memory consumption, an automatic memory leak detector, and features for reviewing from a CPU timing profile.  Developers can isolate and fix these errors quickly and be sure they are fixed.  The profiler also includes an application quality review and the ability to generate snapshots for later review and on-going comparison. 

The second major feature is the visual Thread Debugger, which allows the developers to look at all the threads in a graphical format and click on the blocking threads to locate the exact lines that are causing the issues. 

The third major feature is the Code Coverage feature, which performs two major functions.  First it can verify that the unit-tests created for an application fully covers all of the code, and secondly it can show how much of the code is getting exercised during a QA review. 

The forth feature is the static code Audits that allows users to establish and verify that the best coding practices are being adhered to, and for some coding errors, the Audit process can even fix the errors for the developer.

The final major feature of the JGear Performance is the static code Metrics which can be used to determine the health of the code.  It can pinpoint complexity in mere minutes instead of those dreaded code-reviews.  This product removes the subjective task of code-reviews and returns the violation results from a analytical form that is measurable so that the focus can be on the fix, not the how or why the code is like that, which is a real timesaver.

JGear LiveSource is focused on visualization and RAD (Rapid Application Development) approaches to development.  If the team has inherited a mass amount of code and needs to understand and visualize it, this plug-in will do it.  The model being generated will always be in sync with the code and vice-versa, so changing the code will automatically be reflected in the model, and any changes to the model will automatically be reflected in the code.  This 2-way approach is great for both advanced and novice developers.  Where the advanced developer usually likes to stay firmly in the code and the more novice developer likes the abstraction of UML models, both are serviced well.  The LiveSource plug-in supports the latest JEE application servers on the market today, as well as the latest standards.  It also comes with the ability to migrate older 2.x version EJBs to the new specification 3.0 and it fully supports the new JPA (Java Persistence API). 

The plug-in also supports what is called the SOA Workbench, where developers can graphically develop SOA based applications and Web Services.  Again, the 2-way nature is always present, so if changes need to happen at the code level it is no problem.  The package also includes Peer-to-Peer communication to allow developers to communicate on the same network, thus eliminating the classic “I have to go find person X to help me,” they are a click away.

The next two JGears are focused on ALM (Application Lifecycle Management), which is a very exciting feature.  The JGear Team Server allows a person to establish an entire ALM stack including source code management, bug tracking, requirement management, and continuous builds in a matter of minutes not day or weeks as the normal overhead.  The ProjectAssist feature allows the project administrator to either install a new version of the software or link to an existing installation with a few simple clicks. 

The JGear Team Server plug-in includes all of the supporting products to complete the integration.  Once the environment is established, the project administrator simply emails the project configuration file that is automatically generated by the ProjectAssist wizard, and has the team members add it to their Eclipse environment. The IDE will automatically be configured to work with the new infrastructure, no hassle and no wasted days.  

CodeGear has taken the best of open source ALM products like CVS and Subversion for source control, XPlanner for requirement management, Bugzillia for bug tracking, and Continuum for continuous build integration, then added the full integrations with MySQL, Liferay Portal and many others to give a complete, simple to use ALM product.   The second part of the JGear is the Team Client.  Once loaded, this plug-in can understand the configuration file from the ProjectAssist wizard and completely integrate the views and management of the software into the IDE. 

This includes a complete Project Portal that gives up to the minute statuses on projects, tasks, and developer status.  Integrated burn down charts and other project information can be communicated from developer to developer or from project manager to management.  All the integration is there with a simple setup, but the question from the developer always includes “but what do I have to do to use it?”  Well, that is easy.  Most developers do their normal activities of checking out code, updating tasks, modifying code, commenting on the code, and checking back into the system.  CodeGear wanted to ensure the overhead of the developer was kept to a minimal.

Hopefully by now you have a good sense of what the JGear products are about and how they can best be used in your current Eclipse environment.  Having these key functionalities finally outside the JBuilder product is going to enable a large amount of developers to take advantage of tools and techniques they most likely have only heard or read about in a magazine.  The JGear products can be used individually, or together to allow the developer to create the environment that is best suited to getting their job done.

So, if you need help with performance, or need to ascertain the health of the code being created, then the JGear Performance is the JGear needed.  If you need help developing EJB, Web Services, and the new ability to visualize what has or is being created then the JGear LiveSource would fill your ticket.  If you are looking for a great and easy way to implement a full ALM solution, then the JGear Team Server and JGear Team Client are the plug-ins you should search out.

Also remember, CodeGear has over 50 hours of FREE online video tutorials on how to best use and work with the JBuilder and JGear product lines.  Simply go to the CodeGear Developer Network, click the JBuilder link, then the Videos link, and enjoy.

(The author is product line sales manager, CodeGear)

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