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Summary of new features in Application Developer v7.5

 

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There are lots of new features in Version 7.5, many of which we highlight in detail in the remaining chapters of this book. This section summarizes the new features in Application Developer v7.5:

1. Eclipse 3.4 integration: Includes all Eclipse 3.4 features and extends this functionality with visual development tools and IBM WebSphere support

2. Web based help system with option to run locally

3. Productivity enhancement features:

   • Flexible installation that provides access to only the features you need

   • Cheat sheets for common development patterns

4. Specification versions: Full support for...
   • Java EE 5.0
   • Java SE 6.0
   • IBM WebSphere Application Server v7.0

5. Web tooling:

   • JavaServer Pages (JSP) 2.1 and servlet 2.5 wizards

   • Ability to split the page designer into a designer and source view

   • Ability to position the widget to an absolute position on the page

   • Struts 1.3 support: Wildcards in action mappings and ability to extend Struts artifacts

   • Web Diagram Editor enhancements: Use the new References framework for refactoring, provide a preview before actually committing changes, and show incoming and outgoing links on a node

   • Support for links from data grids: Row action added to a data table in a Faces JSP is now displayed in Web Diagram

   • Enhanced link indexing, validation and refactoring support

     For more detailed information, refer to:

     • Chapter | 3, Developing Web applications using JSPs and | ervlets
     • Chapter | 5, Developing Web applications using Struts

6. JavaServer Faces (JSF) tooling:

   • JavaServer Faces (JSF) 1.2 components and visual tools

   • JSF-based report viewing component for embedding reports into Web applications

   • Integration of third party JSF libraries: Allow users to generate a project containing a definition of how to integrate tooling for the library into Application Developer

   • Custom Component Library Builder: Allow users to build a JSF component library from existing components and integrate that library into the tools

   • JSF Widget Library: Built-in Ajax-like capabilities and Dojo support

   • OpenAjax compliance and co-existence with other Ajax libraries

7. Web 2.0 tooling:

   • Support for developing Ajax and Dojo based applications

   • Visual tools for Ajax proxy

   • Java Script Editor with Outline view, content assist, validation, and refactoring

   • Java Script Debugger: Firebug integration

   • Dojo widget content assist, validation, palette items, property views

   • Drag and drop of Dojo widgets from the palette to Page Designer

   • WebSphere Web 2.0 Feature Pack support: RPC Adapter configuration

   • Expose Java beans as REST-style services

   • Supports JSON and XML data interchange

   • Integrate ATOM and RSS feeds

8. Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) and Java Persistence API (JPA) tooling:

   • As-you-type syntactic validation and code assist for annotations

   • EJB 3.0 semantic validation on save

   • EJB 3.0 and JPA deployment descriptor editor enhancements

   • WAS binding files and deployment descriptors are XML based

   • EJB Visualizer updated to view and edit EJB 3.0

   • Beans can be annotation or XML deployment descriptor based

   • Tool to map JPA beans to database tables

   • Enhanced JSF client support for...
     • EJB 3.0
     • JPA beans

   • Support for adding EJB 3.0 modules to existing applications that have J2EE 1.4 deployment descriptors

9. Java Annotation support:

   • Java Editor

   • Content assist for annotations, injected for simple java projects and component defining annotations, for example @Stateless or @WebService

   • Template based to provide prefilled attribute values based on the annotation's java context

   • Indicates where annotation attribute values can be overridden

   • Hovering on indicator provides the value from the deployment descriptor file

   • Annotation View

   • Editing for annotations without definitions

   • Annotation attributes of type annotations and array of annotations supported

   • Integrated JPA editing

   • EJB deployment descriptor override indicators

   • Integrated with EJB Visualizer

   • Tracing and Logging

   • Java Annotation Index

10. Portal application development:

    • Support of IBM WebSphere Portal 6.1

    • Creation of JSR 286 Portlet projects and support for portlet events: JSR 286 allows the portlets to declare events it wants to publish (send), and events it wants to process (receive)

    • Portlet Deployment Descriptor editor has new tabs to accommodate for JSR 286 specification

    • Support for client-side programming model: Enables Web 2.0 functionality, reduces repeated round trips to server, user actions in the browser cause JavaScript to execute, script communicates directly with the server (XmlHttpRequest or hidden IFRAME)

    • Ajax support: WYSIWYG editor for Ajax proxy configurations

    • Web 2.0 theme support

    • Allows creation of portal pages using static HTML templates

    • Friendly URL names: developers can assign simple easy to remember URLs for particular page

11. Web services:

    • Full support for...
      • Java API for XML Web Services (JAX-WS 2.0)
      • Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB 2.0)
      • SOAP 1.2
      • SOAP with Attachments API for Java (SAAJ 1.3)
      • UDDI 3.0
      • Web Services Reliable Messaging (WS RM)
      • Web Services Addressing (WS Addressing)
      • SOAP Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM)

    • WS-I Basic Profile 1.2 and 2.0

    • EJB 3.0 Web services

    • Enhanced annotation support: Trigger annotations, templatized auto completions, implicit attributes, implied annotations (@WebService implies @BindingType for implementation beans)

    • Quick fixes for unresolved annotations, for example useful after import of a module with source using JAX-WS 2.0 annotations, where Web Services Feature Pack Facet was not selected

    • Extended WSDL validation: detect and warn about issues that frequently occur

12. Data tooling:

    • Two views replaced (Database Explorer is now Data Source Explorer, Output View is now SQL Results)

    • New connection wizard: need to be associated with the right driver and DB2 is version less

    • SQL Result view: allow for nested display, timestamp support, and history persisted with the workspace

    • New SQL and XQuery Editor: Error reporting, syntax and reference parsers, content assist, and include a DML formatter

13. Build utility:

    • A scriptable, automated, headless application build tool

    • Used for automation of production builds

    • Builds and exports are consistent to those from Application Developer

    • Based on ANT with specialized Application Developer ANT tasks

    • Input is Application Developer projects, and the output is compiled and packaged code in the form of JARs, WARs, and EARs

14. Line level coverage:

    • Commonly used for measuring and comparing test coverage

    • Java classes are statically instrumented after compilation (reversible and portable)

    • Code coverage statistics are stored locally for each application launch

    • Indicators and enhanced reports to display levels of covered, uncovered, or partially covered lines

15. Team debugging:

    • Rational Team Concert capabilities allow to transfer a live debug session to another user, so he can continue analysis from where you have left off

16. Server tooling:

    • Stable server connection for server status update

    • Auto detect connection type

    • Test connection to diagnose server connection problem

    • Improved usability of pop-up menu in the Servers View

    • Improved developer experience for server start and stop

    • Support for WebSphere Feature Packs and class paths

    • EJB 3.0 and JPA universal test clients (UTC) available for WebSphere Application Server (WAS) v7.0

    • Adopt new WAS runtime bundle structure

    • WAS v7.0 Jython Library Support

    • Exploiting the new WAS v7.0 Jython libraries in the Jython editor

    • Two new Java Management Extensions (JMX) connection types: IPC connection type and JSR 160 RMI