SOS - Help on Creator performance
Hi,
I know many have raised the performance issue of Creator for sometime now. I also learn that Sun engineers are working hard to address the issue. I was wondering is there any good news? Plan to release new version or fixes which, in particular, address the performance issue?
We are currently experiencing serious problem with our development using Creator. I believe it is difficult for many to do anything productive when it takes 9mins to open a page and nearly a minute for making a change on the page. Not to mention other unexpected behavior of Creator perhaps as a result of bugs. Our development is virtually coming to a halt because of performance issue.
We have tried many of the remedies discussed on the forum such as removing .Creator, tuning the heap size of JVM, turning off anti-virus, increase RAM (2G), etc. We even invented a few techniques of our own such as opening the GUI page navigation would help reduce time when opening JSP and JSPF pages, etc. Yet, the performance of Creator still hinders the development when we try to do anything with it (i.e. switch back and forth the Design and JSP view still takes 30s, etc.).
While our company is impressed with the mockup we prepared using Creator, we may not be able to deliver the application as planned using the IDE. As Sun has offered Creator for free and there is really no one to blame except ourselves, we have already sunk in 6 months of time and effort in learning and developing using JSF and Creator. We only make such an important decision o use Creator for our development because of our faith in Sun engineers and reputations. Nonetheless, all our developers?falls in love with the feature rich environments of Creator when they first began to use the tool, they just cannot bare the performance of the tool now.
While funds has been granted for subscribing support from Sun, we are in serious doubt that we should proceed to further invest in Creator until which time it is mature enough to do some serious development work. In fact, our management has just decided if we cannot resolve the problem soon (sometime this week), painfully as it is, we will cut our lost and drop Creator for good. So, if there is any good advice form all of you pros out there or Sun engineers, now it抯 a good time to learn about them.
Hope I hear some good news from you all real soon.
Brgds,
Rick
[2423 byte] By [
lab51c] at [2007-11-26 9:19:01]
# 1
Hi Rick,
Yes, there is a good news and we are expecting to release a patch shortly.
Please tell us about the size of your project. How many pages do you have?
What is the maximum memory set up in the Creator config file?
Thanks,
Winston
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/winston?catname=Creator
# 2
Pity you. Sun' Studio creator is managed and endorsed by Amateurs. No good engineer is working on that project. That is why it is free. We need to show something even crappy.
These people have developed a Tool based on Netbeans without integrating with NetBeans as a Plugin. Poor ideology. Crapy innovations.
All demos are good. You can't deliver in reality.
# 3
I disagree spattabiraman. I've had quite a bit of help from the creator team on my project. The only criticism I have is that it would have been better to base creator 2 on j2ee5 rather than j2ee4.
# 4
Hi Winston,
Thanks for the prompt reply. It is certainly good news that Sun is planning to release a patch for Creator. However, can you tell me if the patch address the perforamnce issue? And, most importantly, when shall we expect the patch to be release? Just need to know what is our time frame.
FYI, our project estimated to be around 100 jsp/jspf with approx 50-120 compoenets (labels, input, table, button,markup,layout panel) per page. I guess you can understand why we have a good reason to pick Creator as the development platform; in the hope that it will save us time and effort in the front end development.
For the memory config, we have try a number of different settings. The one i am using now is |-J-Xms512m -J-Xmx1024m -J-XX:PermSize=128m -J-XX:MaxPermSize=128m|. With this setting, a page which requires 4mins to open will now takes 3mins. Yet, it is still painstakingly long.
Brgds,
Rick
# 5
Hi Shankar,
I totally agree with you and apologize that we did not address the performance issue for so long.
Here is a little bit of history.
When Creator was conceeved several years ago (started on Dec 2002), it was aimed at so called corporate developers. By corporate developers, we mean developers in small S/W shops that develop applications rapidly. Our research showed most of such shops use ASP/VB for their production. However, then no such Java development tool (especially for web application development) was available. Bringing Java to such developers may be to come up with an ease of use tool that some what resembles the tool of the competitor. So, most of our attention was in providing more features for ease of use.
We mainly forked from Netbeans, because Netbeans was aimed at hard core Java developers or enterprise level users. Retaining may features of Netbeans may be intimidating to these users. So the tool was a scaled down version of Netbeans with added features for VB/ASP like developers.
However, over the years Creator was also liked by Java and JSF community and more enterprise level web application with more than 100-200 pages are being developed. Since, this was not expected when Creator idea was concieved, we are kind of caught off handed in the performance side.
Also, note that, Netbeans itself has changed a lot in terms of ease of use. (Compare NB 4.x with 5.x).
So, the time has come that Creator becomes part of Netbeans as a pack. This is being worked out and we showed a demo during Java ONE.
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/winston?entry=creator_pack_for_netbeans
Also, since performance is a major problem for large application, a tiger team has been formed to look at these issues to support enterprise level customers.
The product is free & being open sourced because, Sun has chosen open source as the business model for all its software.
http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/
Please note that, ultimately it is Customers voice that matters the most for Sun. So please don't hesitate to voice your opinion, even if it is in negative tone :)
- Winston
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/winston?catname=Creator
# 6
Hi Rick,
Yes, the patch would contain (mostly) performance related fixes. We are working for a quick patch. May be with in few weeks if not months, given the strict product release cycle we follow.
Note, that we will continue to look in to the performnace and memory issues, beyond this patch.
Thanks for your patience
- Winston
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/winston?catname=Creator
# 7
> Pity you. Sun' Studio creator is managed and endorsed
> by Amateurs. No good engineer is working on that
> project. That is why it is free. We need to show
> something even crappy.
>
> These people have developed a Tool based on Netbeans
> without integrating with NetBeans as a Plugin. Poor
> ideology. Crapy innovations.
>
> All demos are good. You can't deliver in reality.
Why not you join the creator team and fix all the issues?
It is easy to say anything.
# 8
Did this problem ever get fixed? I'm pulling my hair out working with this tool... I can wait up to 5 minutes just to switch tabs to a different page. It's very frustrating.
# 9
It hasn't been fixed yet, but they (Sun) keep hinting that it is weeks or months away.All I can recommend to you is get a fast computer and use Ubuntu Linux along with 1Gig of RAM... that'll work fine.
# 10
woops.. i was looking at the registration dates thinking they were the post dates - didn't realize this thread was so new.
# 11
Hi Winston,
Thanks for trying. Unfortunately we don't have weeks nor months to spare. Our company has decided to move on with a different approach.. Perhaps we will reconsider Creator again when it has resolved some of these problems.
Hi Tosa_Developer,
Would you care to share you experience with Creator running on Ubuntu Linux? Such as the project size, complexity, etc. I have tried Creator on Red Hat Linux one a Dual Xeon server with 1G RAM. Yet, the response is till dreadfully slow. Even we are no longer using Creator for our project. I like to see if there is anything that we have missed in our initial trial. Appreciate any info you might share. Thanks.
Regards,
Rick
# 12
You asked for it, you got it...the Java Studio Creator team has provided significant design-time performance with this latest hot fix. Connect to the Update Center http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jscreator/downloads/updates/index. html and get it today!
Note: This hot fix requires Sun Java Studio Creator 2 Update 1. If you need to upgrade from Java Studio Creator 2, see the Downloads page http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jscreator/downloads/index.jsp.
Comments? A new forum thread has been started to consolidate discussion about the hotfix and issues related to IDE performance. Come on over to Get Improved Performance with Hot Fix 2 at http://swforum.sun.com/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=105441 and let us know what you think.
# 13
actually , my computer is p4 dual-core with 2 G memory ddr2 , sata disk . I also try to put on a linux server to do something , I get the same performance issue .
I found that it is the GUI problem , it takes time to translate ths jsf file to the design pattern , if the page have many html component , the performance will be very very bad , if I doing some java code modification , the performance is acceptable , I wish creator team can address this issue.
Thanks
# 14
hello mickey ,
Did you use the Update Center to get Hot Fix 2, just released a few days past? The performance problem you described is greatly improved by Hot Fix 2. If you installed Hot Fix 2 and still performance is not good, give us some numbers. What action are you doing, how many pages or components, how much time does it take?
Post any reply to the forum thread "Get Improved Performance with Hot Fix 2" at http://swforum.sun.com/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=105441. More engineers are watching that thread, because it was started to discuss Hot Fix 2.
# 15
Hello, I am a project manager from a small systems development company, we have more than a year using Sun Java Studio Creator Tools, we started using it as a suggestion from one of the developers of my team, which convince me and the company president to invest $100 for the one year support of the tool (the approach that was valid last year, since right now I don't see support is being sold like this).
On last few weeks, due to the deadline arrival of one of our projects, the development team started complaining too much about the tool, that's when I started checking personally the developement process using Java Studio Creator 2, Update 1, and I did realize the performance was terribly bad, and I am referring about 1 hour delay for making a display change.
Yesterday, we installed the Hot Fixes I personally found on the Sun Development Network, and actually thanks to this forum which led me there, and so far the tests have been absolutely great the performance is getting too much better.
From now on, I would keep on writing our experiences to this forum, so that other people can take advantage of our experiences.
We are currently using 2 - 3 GHZ CPUs with 1.5 MB RAM, and I got to say that I was about to spend like 5,000 dollars on buying 4 new Dual Core machines in order to improve performance. I thank god I didn't do it.
Regards to all, and Sun Team, keep your efforts going on...
# 16
We're very glad that the Hotfix performance upgrade is working well for your team. It's worthwhile to check the Java Studio Creator website http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jscreator/index.jsp occassionally or subscribe to the RSS feed http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jscreator/rsssubscription.jsp to keep informed about product enhancements, new tutorials, and free training webinars. You can also get to the site by clicking the "What's New" button in the IDE's Welocme screen at startup. We keep the site rich in technical content and light in marketing news, so don't overlook its resources.
Creator's main features are being contributed as the Visual Web Pack to the Netbeans project for our goal to provide all you need in one IDE. Right now it's in Technical Preview status, but the first FCS release will come in a few weeks. When you have time, look it over at http://www.netbeans.org/products/visualweb/
