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jhandler

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Which Java IDE is the best for GUI/database development?

I am quite new to Java and am using the basic Java as downloaded from Sun.
I am finding GUI development quite tedious, in particular layout managers and laying out components correctly.
Other requirements I have include
- good support for database interaction
- support for Swing and integration with 3rd party Java components and existing Java code
- ease of  CORBA development
- application development in general
Can someone recommend one ?– I have heard that Symantic Visual Café is the best all round Java development tool. Is this right ?
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Ravindra76

From: vladi21

Date: Wednesday, February 02 2000 - 03:17AM CST

comparison:

http://www.infoworld.com/testcenter/comparison/991213tcintro.html 
http://www.infoworld.com/testcenter/comparison/991213tcrc.html 

Borland JBuilder 3, Enterprise
http://www.infoworld.com/testcenter/comparison/991213tcjbuild.html



Comment

From: Jod

Date: Wednesday, February 02 2000 - 04:58AM CST

There are full up to date ratings of all windows development environments for Java and other languages here:

http://www.deja.com/rate/list_items.xp?CID=11954&PCID=11803 

Visual Age and JBuilder come out better than Visual Cafe, though Visual Cafe has some nice features.

Visual Age is often worthy of note for being the best Java IDE for developing large heavywieght projects with a
team as opposed to single developers.

You will also find a number of comments for each tool though, as always, don't take other peoples comments as
the word of god.

The best way to evaluate is to try out the tools if you can.

This is the best way to see how they work for you and though it may take some time to do (1-2 weeks) it could
save you a costly mistake.

You can also note that JBuilder 2 Professional was given away on the coverdisk of PCPro or PCPlus this month (in
the UK at least) so you can try out the full professional version of this tool for free if you can get hold of a copy of
this.

I will check which magazine it was (have it at home) if this is of any use to you.


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jvishnu

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CORBA does not require Java, so you CAN start with it if you want. There are some good book on programming with CORBA and Java. I agree that it is good to introduce concepts step by step, so may be it is a good idea first to try Java a bit, its core APIs. Then read about CORBA first, then try examples, etc.

JBuilder is a good IDE for visual assembly of GUI. It has a free foundation version (www.inprise.com) that is a good start. In general for development with Java min 96M memory is a good start :-) for the hardware part.

Cheers,
  Nik
jvishnu:
anyway you'd BETTER post COMMENTS instead of ANSWERS.

welcome to EE. :)
Ok. Here is my 2 cents.

Symantec is good. But make sure you work on a faster machine. Even a 266Mhz Machine is not fast engough for Symantec.

Now if you are using JDK1.2 (JAVA2) compiler, Sun micro systems has released a free IDE with Drag And Drop support. This is called "Forte For Java 1.0" Community Edition. But again, make sure you install this in a faster machine too. :-) :-)
To download, please visit:

http://www.netbeans.com/ffj/community/index.html

I am using this in a SUN Ultra5000 machine. It's speed is fairly ok.
If you would like to construct a 100% jdk compatible interface you can use bluette:
http://home.rochester.rr.com/compucat/

It has the big advantage of not being a resource greedy app.