Tutorials : Java Studio Creator 2: Trading Ease-of-use for Performance :

Java Studio Creator 2: Trading Ease-of-use for Performance

Most IDE's in the market today (Eclipse, JDeveloper, JBuilder, IntelliJ IDEA, NetBeans, etc) are designed for experienced Java developers, requiring a thorough knowledge of Java and JSP. Moreover, most of these IDEs are expensive and have limited support for JSP development—not ideal for small- to medium-sized companies with limited staffs and low budgets who need to get small applications done quickly. Such companies are forced to look for simpler alternatives, like using Visual Basic on Visual Studio. Visual Studio provides a one-stop development environment where developers with little experience can build small- to medium-sized applications in a short time.

Java Studio Creator (JSC) is the beginning-level IDE these small-scale application developers are looking for. JSC provides a comprehensive development environment that allows developers to build small- to mid-sized applications from scratch—without needing a lot of Java expertise. Even novice programmers can build and upload a small- to medium-sized Web site with database connectivity, style sheets, and JavaScript in a matter of days. JSC gives you everything you need in a development environment: a visual development environment (using a drag-and-drop UI), database connectivity, code templates, syntax coloring and checking, easily accessible component palettes, customizable palettes, a visual navigation tool, Http Monitor, etc. JSC is also very inexpensive—it costs under $100.00 a year.

Notable Features

JSC has some features that are not found in most of the regular Java IDEs:

Rapid Development Tool: JSC is a rapid development tool that quickly creates Web applications and deploys them to production. It provides built-in support for creating the JSP pages, connecting to databases, and deploying to most applications servers.

Drag-and-drop Components: Like most popular visual development environments, JSC provides a drag-and-drop development environment. To develop a page, drag a component from the palette onto the form, then select the component and use the properties editor/palette to set the components' default properties. JSC provides a variety commonly used features like calendars and paginators and allows you to directly drag and drop them on to a JSP page.

Page Navigation: JSC makes it simple to link different pages in an application. The editor provides a navigation view that displays icons for each JSP page in your application. Selecting a page and dragging it to the destination page makes a link to the destination page. JSC creates an automatic link between these pages and generates all the associated java code for them. The navigation view also shows the current relations between pages and allows the user to change them if required.

Code Clips: Code Clips is a collection of often-used code snippets. Double click on a clip and the code is available for use in the Java editor. This feature is especially useful for new Java programmers or programmers migrating from VB who are just getting familiar with the Java syntax. Apart from the code clips embedded in the product, JSC allows you to import code clips from external sources and use them in your application.

Debugging: Most Java IDEs do not have good debugging support for the presentation layer (JSP pages), but JSC provides a good debugging interface you can use for stepping through the application code, setting breakpoints, and watching variables.

HTTP Monitor: An HTTP monitor tracks the flow of HTTP requests to and from the application server. This feature is useful when the you need to find errors based on wrong input parameters. It consists of two components: a client-side component and a server-side component. The client-side component allows you to view the requests made to the application server and track the responses received. The server-side counterpart records the calls made to different components within the server. The HTTP monitor requires the server-side component to be installed before it can be used. Remember, though, that support for the server-side HTTP monitoring is only provided by the Sun Application Server, so it won't work on other application servers.

Virtual Forms: Virtual forms allow you to group HTML elements in a Web page into a logical group. When the form is submitted only the elements in the virtual form are submitted. This allows you to create different virtual forms for different actions on a page.

Installation

Java Studio Creator comes packaged as a standard setup program. Execute the setup program, choose a location for installation, and then leave the rest to the installer. Among the applications being installed are: an IDE, the PointBase Database Server (Restricted Edition), and the Sun Java Application Server. The installation may take some time owing to the installation and configuration of the three products and depending on your system configuration. Make sure you have sufficient RAM on your system before installing.

Here are the system requirements:

Intel Pentium 4 (or equivalent) at 1GHz processing speed
RAM 512 MB
Disk Space 325 MB (an additional 250 MB required for installation)

Verifying the Installation

Start a new JSF Web application project (File Menu—>New Project—≫Web—>JSF Application)
Click next and enter a name for the project (HelloWorld)
Next enter a location for the Project or accept the default value.
Click Finish
JSC creates a new JSP page for you (Page1.jsp)

You can view the page in any of three views: Design, JSP, or Java. In design view, drag a 'Static Text' component from the Components Palette onto Page1.jsp. Type "Hello World!". Keeping the component selected, go to the Properties palette and click the 'Ellipsis' button to change the style of the text. Set the text to the desired font size. Save the page.

From the main menu, select Build—>Build Main Project to compile the application. Next select Run—≫Run Main Project. This starts the Sun Java Application Server, included with the software, if it is not already running. The HelloWorld application is then packaged and deployed on the server. JSC also fires the default browser and navigates to the application. If the page is displayed with "Hello World" on it, your installation has been successful.

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