JavaGeek.org - Eclipse category

Why I dislike Websphere

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 14:51:48 GMT

At work, I've been working on a project that uses Websphere Application Server (WAS) 5.1. Part of the development setup is to use Websphere Studio Application Developer (WSAD) 5.1, because it is tightly integrated with WAS.

One of the problems this represents is that WSAD 5.1 is based on Eclipse 2.1.3. After working with Eclipse 3.x for so long, I find it really hard to use an older version, that doesn't provide many of the features I've come to expect, like showing a list of defined keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl-Shift-L), or getting the latest plug-in for subversion (Subclipse).

Another problem is that Websphere uses its own JVM, made by IBM, which although it's supposed to be 100% compatible, I still think there are some 'hidden features'. And I've never seen eclipse (or other java programs running with Sun's JVM) give me this kind of error:

There's no stack trace, no reason given. It's almost as bad as a Microsoft product.

MyEclipse 4.0 is out...

Tue, 30 Aug 2005 14:42:30 GMT

Finally, after using 4.0M2 for a while, I am upgrading to the GA (General Availability) version of MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench. Among the new features that comes with this release, I'm most interested in their UML Perspective, their JSF support and the new Visual Web Designer. You can check all the new features here.

For only $31.75/year, I really think it is a great bargain for the features that Eclipse needs for web development.

Oh, and I don't have any relation to Genuitec, the company behind MyEclipse.

WPT 0.7 Out... Hold your horses!

Tue, 02 Aug 2005 22:48:03 GMT

So, after playing around with Eclipse's Web Tools Project 0.7, which was released last friday and reading some of the documentation from the site, I can say that, at least for me, WTP isn't ready for prime time yet.

The developers of WTP acknowledge this, as they changed the version number from 1.0 to 0.7 from the original plan, and hope to have a version 1.0 until the end of this year. Although a lot of functionality is already there and working, the feel for it is that there's still a lot to do.

You can't convert an existing project to a web project, for example. Source and webapp dir routes seem to be non-changeable, and there's still lack of support for many Application Servers.

For me, it's back to MyEclipse IDE, with no plans to change to WTP in the near future.