RE: Survey: How do YOU develop Java on iSeries?

> From: ttufankj@xxxxxxxxx
> 
> The two of us in my shop are new to Java.  We've been working with
Visual
> Age and are finally starting to master it.  Now we find that IBM is
> dropping support in December.  The Websphere Studio has a GUI ide but
it
> doesn't use connections like VAJ.  I can't believe we invested all of
this
> time to learn a product and then IBM drops it!   I guess we'll have to
> learn how to code our own events.

Whatever you do, try to stick with WDSC.  This tool is the real deal.
I've spent a lot of time with the JDT (the Java tooling) and the iSeries
extensions, and recently I started taking a look at the web development
pieces, and I'll tell you - WDSC is the best all around IDE I've ever
seen.

Since you use VAJ, I assume your development is in Swing.  While that's
fine, I'd suggest looking into SWT (the Standard Widget Toolkit) which
is part of Eclipse (and thus part of WDSC).  SWT creates faster, more
"native" looking applications than Swing.  (As an unabashed plug, my
book Eclipse: Step by Step shows an example of a simple SWT application
that accesses a database.)

I'm a longtime VAJ user (and advocate), but I never really used the VCE
that much.  I would occasionally use it to see how it generated code,
but once I understood it, I would rewrite my own version, wrapper that
code in my own classes, and then I didn't need the GUI designer anymore.

There are Eclipse plug-ins currently available that may help you in your
quest for a WDSC GUI design tool, but I haven't spent much time with
them.  This is probably the place where WDSC falls short compared to
VAJ, and I feel for you if you've been using the VCE a lot.  But if
you're going to move on to web development, Eclipse/WDSC is really the
way to go.

Joe