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Who : Charles Ditzel

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Java Studio Creator 2 : A Familiar IDE For Visual Basic/VB.NET Developers

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posted Tuesday, 2 May 2006
Visual Basic is unquestionably one of Microsoft's most popular software development languages. Whereas, other prior environments may have had many similar elements - the popularity of Windows at the time of its release accelerated its growth..  What set it apart from other development environments was the approach it took that allowed developers to visually develop applications. Incrementally, Visual Basic
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grew in subsequent releases up to Visual Basic 6.  It was the basic (no pun intended) programming language of Windows that a novice could learn and  develop Windows applications in a relatively short time.  With the advent of Java, Microsoft turned its attention to competing against the quickly growing Java phenomena.  Since then, a major dislocating fracture has taken place with the release of .NET.  Upon the release of .NET, Visual Basic developers, who where used to the syntax and structure of Visual Basic and some who were already balking at some of the new language features of VB6, found
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Java Studio Creator 2 makes working with AJAX components easy.  Select to enlarge.
 VB.NET as at best an alien language that shared very little with its  predecessors, VB6 and its ancestors. There are plenty of sites that document this major dislocation [ 1 2 3 ]. The difference between the two flavors, Visual Basic (6) and VB.NET has been documented to a great degree and you can see some of the differences were problematic for migration in such articles as Abandoning the Fantasy of VB Migration Wizardry.  Since the article was written, Microsoft has released some other tools to try and help the process of migration. Such an impact has the Visual Basic community made on Microsoft that Microsoft is committed to 
making Visual Basic 6.0 apps work on Windows Vista and they continue to maintain and add to a Visual Basic 6.0 Resource Center.  Many Visual Basic  developers, however, have simply migrated  to Java.  Others have moved to .NET either opting for VB.NET or C#.  The initial and subsequent message has been that the VB.NET roadmap had  become the VB roadmap.  I suspect that if Microsoft could do things over they might opt for a different strategy.  Today, Java is welcoming both C#, VB.NET and other .NET developers.  The low barriers to entry of Java,  the diverse and rich set of Java open source and commercial software and an engaged community that drives the platform all offer an attractive proposition.  So it is worthwhile to think of what is and was missing.  For a long time what was missing were development environments that were familiar and as easy as the original Visual Basic was to learn. With so many great Java development environments, one would think that Eclipse and NetBeans would fit the bill and yet both are extremely code-concentric.  One could make a good argument that the NetBeans
Creator offers familiarity, visual development facilities and powerful drag-and-drop access to enterprise resources. addition of Matisse has changed the face of Swing development - but still for many Visual Basic developers learning Swing (or for that matter SWT) remains an elusive prospect.  Java Studio Creator 2 offers the most welcoming of the development environments.  Creator offers familiarity, visual development facilities and powerful drag-and-drop access to enterprise
resources.  It provides a visual development environment that most Visual Basic/VB.NET  developers feel at home in. For an example of such a transition you can look at what happened at NewEnergy (there is even a short movie).  Java Studio resonated with the VB developers and they made use of the visual development, drag-and-drop approach of Java Studio Creator.  Java Studio Creator has  made it easy allowing drag-and-drop of database
tables, web services and EJBs onto a GUI component - thus removing the major obstacle in the building of complex applications. Developers end up focusing on what they are building and less time worried about the low-level plumbing details. You can see the power of the environment by going through some of the tutorials here. Note that Java Studio Creator 2 offers a complete solution - besides the development environment it provides an application server and a database server. A developer can design, develop and deploy their
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application, testing the app and then possibly deploy it to a different app server or platform. Java Studio Creator 2 uses  JavaServer Faces and JavaServer Pages within the development environment.  It is possible to visually layout the web application and look at it visually or look and edit at the code behind it.  It has become simple to tap into database servers or consume web services and business components (EJBs).  In addition to allowing standard Java web application development,  Java Studio Creator 2 has made leveraging the CSS styles/themes and AJAX much easier - you can see some of the new AJAX components here.  A developer can add an auto-complete text field, progress bars,  map viewers that use Google maps, Buy-Now button to initiate a Pay-Pal transaction and number of others AJAX components. Java Studio Creator 2 also has a powerful
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Java Studio Creator 2 Query Editor
 Query Editor. The Creator 2 Query Editor has three specific views of the data - a design view, a design grid and the SQL source code.  There are a number of useful tutorials on dealing with  database access:
> Using Databound Components to Access Databases
> Performing inserts, Updates and Deletes
> Creating Database Server Types and Data Sources
> Working with Data Providers
The Query Editor is one of the key aspects of Java Studio Creator 2 allowing developers to access and work with databases.  Visual Basic developers will find all of this useful and familiar. They will have a complete environment with transparent deployment of their app to the 
app server.  The intricacies of the environment are hidden and at the same time  easy to use.  While Java Studio Creator 2 isn't VB or VB.NET  it offers a strong Java alternative.  Java Studo Creator 2 provides an excellent and familiar development environment for VB/VB.NET developers moving to Java.  It won't only be VB and VB.NET developers that will find this useful - web app developers in general are finding this to be an extremely powerful environment - within the NetBeans community many developers are asking for NetBeans to incorporate some of Creator's features.  If you are looking at providing a Visual Basic/VB.NET developer with something familiar and easy-to-use, Java Studio Creator 2 fits the bill.  It is free and can be downloaded from here.  In the next blog we will look at some other solutions that .NET developers will find useful and familiar.  By the way - If you haven't voted - check out the poll/vote on the sidebar.
 

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