Help needed with evaluating Sun Studio Creator
I am evaluating Sun Studio Creator as a platform for developing JSF applications. I really like its WYSIWYG editor, but strugging with how I would fit it in my environment. I currently use a Maven generated EJB layer running on JBoss.
1) Ideally I would like to package my EJBs and WAR into one EAR and deploy it on JBoss. Is this possible through the IDE? I would still like to keep my Maven scripts for building the EJB layer (basically I like Maven lot more than Ant and I am not willing to give up its functionality). How would I go about doing EJB development using Maven in parallel with front-end development using JSC?
2) Does Sun Studio Creator somehow lock me into its framework? I see that the code it generates uses custom tags such as the Web UI tags. I have not seen any good documentation justifying why I should be using these custom tag libraries and framework - giving up my freedom to experiment with other approaches. For that matter, I was not able to find a "user guide" on the tag libraries at all - only the javadocs, which are more like reference material. Can someone point me in the right direction?
3) If I wanted to use just the standard components specified in the JSF specification, which tool bars should I limit myself to? The "Standard" toolbar? Also does it mean that I will need to manually rip out the auto-generated elements such as Web UI tags, framework specific backing beans etc. Would a "seasoned" JSC user even think of using the tool in this way?
I would really appreciate any guidance you can give me on this topic.
Thanks.
# 1
Hmmm, I am surprised that no one has tried to anwer my questions! I was hoping that people would jump at this post - selling me on their favorite IDE :-). Anyway, I will take partial answers, quick opinions, whatever you can contribute. Thanks again for helping me out.
# 2
> 1) Ideally I would like to package my EJBs and WAR into one EAR and deploy it on JBoss. Is this possible through the IDE?
No, you can not do this in Creator.
> I would still like to keep my Maven scripts for building the EJB layer (basically I like Maven lot more than Ant and I am not willing to give up its functionality). How would I go about doing EJB development using Maven in parallel with front-end development using JSC?
After you develop your EJBs using your Maven scripts and deploy them JBoss, you can then add the EJBs into Creator. Since JBOSS is not a supported appserver for EJB consumption functionality, please following the following tech article
http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jscreator/reference/tips/2/jboss.h tml
# 3
Thanks Dongmei. It is helpful to know how you were able to achieve this. I have been looking at various other solutions in the past few days and it appears that NetBeans in combination with Mevenide might be the most productive in my situation (because I like to retain Maven as my build tool) - although I would be loosing the WYSIWYG editors of JSC. I am really waiting for JSC to move to NetBeans which might solve some of the problems - even then the JSC team should think about becoming Maven friendly.
Again, thanks for your help.
# 6
Before I forget, I want to pass on the following feedback from my evaluation. Hopefully some of these items can be addressed in the upcoming release. Please note that I am not a JSC power user, so some of the impressions were made during a very limited evaluation period.
1) It seems that JSC was designed to allow only the use of its framework/components such as the Web UI components etc. It seems pretty hard NOT to use the JSC framework/components and introduce other frameworks such as Tiles. I would prefer if JSC took a more flexible approach of also supporting other ways in which people may want to develop JSF applications.
2) Support for a robust page templating mechanism. I really don't know how to create large complex web sites without introducing something like Tiles.
3) Native support for Maven. I am sure people know the goodness of Maven and I should not have to list its advantages. It would be really nice if I can just point to a Maven pom.xml file and build my project, instead of messing around with Ant scripts. This would also mean supporting nested Maven projects.
4) Full support for packaging and deploying ear files. This means the ability to support EJB projects living side-by-side with Web projects.
5) It was not clear from the tutorials whether the databound controls work only with databases or can I bind them to in-memory objects. It would be good to allow binding to data transfer objects received from the middle-tier rather that going directly at the database.
# 7
> Java Studio Creator's next release will be merged
> onto Netbeans 5.5. Stay tuned...lot of exciting
> things coming your way :-)
I would like to clarify. There will be a pack available for NetBeans 5.5 that contains a lot of the features of the Java Studio Creator IDE, including drag and drop components and the Visual Editor, but Java Studio Creator is not being merged with NetBeans 5.5.
There is also work in progress for the next release of the Sun Java Studio Creator IDE.
