J2EE perspective

The J2EE perspective includes workbench views that you can use when developing resources for enterprise applications, EJB modules, Web modules, application client modules, and connector projects or modules.

You can rearrange the location, tiling, and size of the views within the perspective. You can also add other views to the J2EE perspective by clicking Window > Show View and selecting the view.

The workbench provides synchronization between different views and editors. This is also true in the J2EE perspective.

By default, the J2EE perspective includes the following workbench views:

Project Explorer

The Project Explorer provides an integrated view of your projects, grouped by type, and their artifacts related to J2EE development. It displays navigable models of J2EE deployment descriptors, Java artifacts (source folders, packages, and classes), navigable models of the available Web services, and specialized views of Web modules to simplify the development of dynamic Web applications. In addition, EJB database mapping and the configuration of projects for a J2EE application server are made readily available.

Outline

The Outline view in the J2EE perspective shows the outline of the file that you are editing. For example, if you are using a tabbed deployment descriptor editor, the Outline view shows the outline for the selected page's elements, and if you are editing on the Source tab, the outline for the XML source is displayed. If you are editing an enterprise bean in the Java editor, the Outline view shows the outline for the Java class.

Tasks

The Tasks view lists the to-do items that you have entered.

Problems

The Problems view displays problems, warnings, or errors associated with the selected project. You can double-click on an item to address the specific problem in the appropriate resource.

Properties

The Properties view provides a tabular view of the properties and associated values of objects in files you have open in an editor. For example, you can specify converters in the Properties view of the Mapping editor.

Status bar

The Status bar provides a description of the location of selected objects in the Project Explorer views in the left side. When file and deployment descriptors are open, the status bar shows the read-only state of the files and the line and column numbers when applicable. Sometimes when long operations run, a status monitor will appear in the status bar, along with a button with a stop sign icon. Clicking the stop sign stops the operation when the operation can be cancelled.

Servers

The Servers view shows all the created server instances. You can start and stop each server from this view, and you can launch the test client.

Snippets

The Snippets view provides categorized snippets of code that you can insert into appropriate places in your source code.