Cho who is a Java Technology Evangelist who was part of the original JavaSoft Engineering group and today travels around the world talking to Java developers and Ocativan Tanase, the Java Studio Creator Group Engineering Manager. If you don't know Sun Java Studio Creator 2 has been committed to be open-sourced by Sun. There is plenty of very cool things that are happening in the Creator world, we tried to go
over much of that. The complete picture of Creator software is made of four key pieces : a visual development environment, a Java EE application server, a database server and a Java development runtime.
We were happy with the attendance and we structured the talk so that each presenter would speak for two or three reasons and then a new presenter would take over. Some very nice light moments happened during the talk. One,
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The Complete Picture of Creator 2
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Octavian, was making a point about the good symbiotic relationship between NetBeans and Creator - he put on a NetBeans t-shirt he thought was an XL and was more like a Medium. He managed to get the t-shirt on - it was hilariously small for him. In the process, he knocked his microphone out of commission - and he couldn't gracefully take off his undersized t-shirt so he turned to Inyoung and tried to use the microphone pinned to her lapel. The whole scene was quite funny and people were rolling in the aisles with laughter. For all the comedy Octavian provided some great insightful information and a great JSF -AJAX component demo. Same with Inyoung who showed how easy it was to drag-and-drop a web service, an EJB method and a database table onto a component. As I said earlier for the NetBeans talk we tried to create a buffet of features that the audience can "snack on". This was also the case for the Creator talk. This approach makes for a fairly dynamic presentation full of information and demos. Here are the 12 reasons we presented (note most of the links below point to tutorials) :
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One-Click Download, Rapid Web Application Visual Development Tool. Java Studio Creator 2 is a complete Web Application visual development tool that allows easy construction of web apps and portlets. A developer constructs his application by drag-and-dropping components into a layout area and then binding those components (again using drag-and-drop) to database tables, EJB methods and web services. There are many different types of components that cover the gamut of needs by web application developers. The visual environment extends to easily changing the properties of components. In addition, a developer may use the Creator debugger to discover errors. A developer can also look at edit the underlying source code - changes will be reflected in the visual environment. It becomes very easy to understand why NetBeans developers have requested why the Creator visual development environment should be included in NetBeans - it is compelling. The Creator IDE is particularly attractive to Visual Basic developers and developers who opt for creative simplicity in building applications over power and complexity. |
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Database Support and (SQL/Query) Editor. The Sun Java Studio Creator 2 IDE provides a nice database editor which allows developers to edit SQL code, turn on and off table elements and view a database table in a graphic design view. Creator provides easy ways to perform inserts, updates and deletes as well as add new database server types and datasources and work with Data Providers. The Java DB (Derby) is bundled with Sun Java Studio Creator 2 Update 1. Prior versions bundle PointBase database. Developers can choose to use other database servers such as Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, IBM DB2, Sybase and Oracle to name a few. The developer can drag-and-drop a database table onto a component and then use the dialog Bind To Data to specify particular elements to the component. |
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Tight Integration With Application Server. Creator has very tight integration with the bundled Sun Application Server 8.2. It can also work or deploy the created WAR file with a number of other servlet engines (Tomcat), web servers (Sun Web Server), Portal Servers ( Sun Portal Server) and application servers (IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic). The bundled Sun App Server includes an administration console that allows complete control over the app server. Deployment of your web app to the bundled app server is as simple as selecting the deploy button. |
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Navigator Experience. Creator has a Navigator which allows a developer to gain a high level view of the pages that they create and their interconnections and data that pages share. Developers can use Navigator to create new pages and connect pages together. |
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Drag-and-Drop Component Data Binding With Data Source. DataProvider APIs provide the glue that binds components to arbitrary datasources , Web Services, EJB Methods, Hibernate, Spring... etc).
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Consuming Web Services. Anyone that has tried Java Studio Creator 2 is immediately taken by the ability to drag-and-drop a web service onto a component. First, it is relatively easy to add a web service as one of your resources by simply locating and designating the WSDL file and testing the service. Once the web service is available as a resource you can simply drag-and-drop the web service onto a component. Then you can use the dialog Bind To Data to further bind particular data elements. |
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Consuming Serverside Business Components. You can consume EJB methods in the same way you can consume web services - you can simply drag-and-drop an EJB resource onto a component. then you can use the dialog Bind To Data to similarly bind particular components. |
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JSF Portlets. Creator makes it easy to create Portlets. It is JSR 168 compliant and allows developers to easily create JSF Portlets for and works nicely with Sun's Portal Server. |
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AJAX-Enabled JavaServer Faces Components From Update Center. New Blueprints AJAX components. These include Auto-Complete Text Field, Map Viewer, Progress Bar, Rich Text Area Editor, Select Value Text Field, Buy Now Button, Rating components. Also included are non-visual AJAX-Support Beans for Geocoding Service Object, Geographic Points Map Maker, Map Point and Buy Now Data. There are some good benefits with using Creator - you can control content rendering, control the serverside logic, edit the CSS and hides the AJAX and Javascript complexity. The architecture allows for AJAX built into lifecycle, everything is handled by JSF and a JSF phase listener. A develoepr can choose a different architecture uses a separate servlet. |
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Virtual Form. Virtual forms enable you to limit the input fields that are processed when a web page is submitted. Two essential elements of a virtual form are its input components and its submission components. Input components, such as text fields, text areas, drop-down lists, and radio buttons, participate in the virtual form. Submission components, most commonly buttons or links, submit the virtual form. When a virtual form is submitted, the virtual form's participants are processed while the other components on the page are ignored; essentially, the virtual form's participants are processed as if they were on their own page. You can include more than one virtual form on a page, and each virtual form is processed separately. An input component can particpate in multiple virtual forms, but a submission component can submit at most one virtual form. |
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Theme Support. The Java Studio Creator 2 includes a theme with every project that you create. A theme consists is a set of images, JavaScript files, style sheets, properties, and messages that are used to define the look and feel of the components. Themes apply to the Basic, Layout, and Composite components. You can create your own them and the result is a different look and feel for the components. |
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NetBeans Software Support. Java Studio Creator 2 is built on top of the NetBeans Rich Client Platform (RCP). This fact provides Creator with the benefits of the NetBeans plugin ecosystem (meaning that NetBeans- produced plugins can be loaded and add features to Creator) and the NetBeans Update Center (which allows easy and transparent ways to add features). NetBeans and Java Studio Creator 2 are synergistic, compatible and complementary. While Java Studio Creator 2 is used to create web applications and portlets, NetBeans can be used to create many of the consumables Creator may use : web services, Enterprise Java Beans and applets. NetBeans developers have also asked for Creator technologies and they will be able to build apps using Creator technologies as well. |
Throughout these reasons we provided a number of demos. There were a few reasons we did not show because of time. Here are some of the reasons that are equally compelling but for reasons of time were mentioned in passing but really deserve more attention.
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Great Educational Resources. Creator has some of the best tutorials I have ever seen. Excellent tutorials that walk you through how-to-build scenarios, best practices reference docs, code samples, |
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Converters. Creator provides a set of converters that you can use to convert component data. If your input field is for numbers, then you most likely need a converter. Converters are also good for formatting dates, times, and currency values. Here are converters included in Creator 2 :
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Big Decimal Converter |
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Boolean Converter |
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Calendar Converter |
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Character Converter |
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Date Time Converter |
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Double Converter |
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Float Converter |
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Integer Converter |
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Long Converter |
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Number Converter |
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Short Converter |
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SQL Timestamp Converter |
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Byte Converter |
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Validators. Creator provides components (operators) for validating user input. These validators, which you access from the Validators section of the Components Palette :
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Double Range Validator. Checks whether the local value of a component is within a certain range. The value must be floating-point or convertible to floating-point. |
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Length Validator. Checks whether the length of a component's local value is within a certain range. The value must be a java.lang.String. |
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Long Range Validator. Checks whether the local value of a component is within a certain range. The value must be any numeric type or String that can be converted to a long. |
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HTTP Monitor. Creator provides the HTTP Monitor to help diagnose problems with data flow from JSP page and servlet execution on the web server. The HTTP Monitor gathers data about HTTP requests that are processed by the servlet engine. For each HTTP request that is processed, the monitor records data about the incoming request and the data states maintained on the server. |
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Building Custom Components. Developers can create their own custom components. Creator 2 allows component authors to bundle a set of components together into a component library and deliver it to an IDE user as a single complib file (a package file, much like a WAR or EAR file, containing the contents of a component library). |
I was very happy with presentation, the interest afterwards and many of the questions from developers. I hope developers building web applications that are looking for free and soon-to-be open-source tools will check out Java Studio Creator 2 - it really is the easiest way to build a web application. To both of my co-presenters - I have to say a big, big "thank you". For our audience members and anyone else that wants to use the tehnologies they saw - go to the Creator website and download Java Studio Creator 2.
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