Oracle Releases New 10g Java Toolset

JDeveloper 10g, available now, complements Oracle's 10g Application Server, which was released in December. The two products, combined with the 10g database, comprise Oracle's software infrastructure stack, which the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based vendor has optimized to support grid computing.

JDeveloper 10g costs $995 per individual user for a deployment and production license, though developers can evaluate and download the product for free from the Oracle Developer Network site, said Rob Chang, product marketing director for application server and tools at Oracle.

A key new feature of the toolset is the Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF), a set of technologies designed to allow developers to visually model applications to improve productivity and enable less-skilled Java developers to use the tool, said Ted Farrell, Oracle's chief architect for application development.

"We're trying to add a much more visual environment and abstract the user from underlying technologies to appeal to a much wider base of developers," Farrell said. "It really shelters the person building the [application] from the back end."

Farrell compared the new framework with competing products such as the BEA Systems' WebLogic Workshop and Sun Microsystems' Java Studio Creator tools. Indeed, simplifying J2EE development has been a key goal of most Java software vendors, which have released tools emulating Microsoft Visual Basic in the hope of boosting J2EE's appeal among corporate developers who may be unfamiliar with the complex Java environment for building applications.

However, Farrell noted key differences between Oracle's ADF and other vendors' offerings. For one thing, he said, ADF includes a set of functionality from two existing products, Oracle E-Business Suite and Business Components for Java, which Oracle has re-engineered to support Java and Web services standards. That means the product is more highly evolved than comparable tools in the market, he added.

"We have a rich set of framework components that aren't in version 1.0, unlike [our competitors], who are writing from scratch," Farrell said.

ADF also is supported by Oracle's 10g Application Server and a host of other J2EE-certified application servers, while competing products usually are optimized primarily for the vendor's own application server, Farrell said. Oracle has certified the framework for BEA WebLogic and JBoss application servers, but it can easily run on any other J2EE app server, Farrell said.

Other new features in JDeveloper 10g include a new graphical JSP editor for building Web pages using Java and a new graphical XML editor that enables developers to build XML schema definitions graphically.

All of the additions are aimed at allowing developers "to work in a much more visual way to reach a broader set of users," Farrell said.