vsbabu.org

JDeveloper 10g on Linux

Thanks to Isabel, just before power went out, I downloaded Oracle JDeveloper 10g preview edition. It is a 230MB download, after a free registration (possibly followed by many sales calls from Oracle!) certified for Win32. Just for the fun of it, I copied it over to my Linux partition and ran it. It runs just as well - here is a screen shot. Perhaps Java is _really_ cross-platform!

So far, I have not run into any problems. This is inspite of running it on JDK 1.4.2; while JDeveloper warned me that it is certified only on 1.4.1. It actually starts up a bit faster than on my Windows XP Home version.

I usually use Fluxbox window manager, when I have to do some coding - I’d rather preserve memory for my editor/IDE, rather than letting desktop manager consume it. Only one annoyance I’ve found so far is that Fluxbox’s window decorations are not there for JDeveloper window. I can’t resize or I can’t maximize the window. I can, however, close it by clicking on the close icon.

Very easy to add a connection to local MySQL database too. Just go to Tools - Preferences - Database Connections and add MySQL driver as a third party driver. Then, you can use this driver to make the connection.

On Windows, default Version control tool is Oracle SCM. Getting it to work with CVS and PuTTY was pretty hard. I aborted the idea since it looked like I’ll have to mess around with SSH key files. On Linux, CVS is the default tool - it worked right away. While configuring a repository, specify External as the protocol and then choose ssh (default is rsh) in "External Locator Configuration".

UML diagramming is very good - so is generating UML diagram from existing Java source. Drag and drop GUI building seems to work, but I didn’t try enough. Nor did I try running the built-in oc4j containers.

Wishlist

1. Get window decorations back!
2. How can I use Bitstream Vera fonts? In Eclipse, I could use the font dialog to set it. In JDeveloper (and in jEdit), it doesn’t come up in the list. Those fonts are the best. There is a way you can make Bitstream fonts as the default system fonts, but I don’t want to do that.
3. Explain the Workspace-Applications Navigator paradigm very easily. I like Eclipse’s perspectives, so may be I’m not used to Oracle’s paradigms.
4. Easy notes on how to install Look 'n Feel packages - I don’t like Metal or Oracle look for an IDE.

For the moment, I’ll stick to Eclipse. I must have the fonts I like in my editor

If you were wondering what the code in the screenshot is for; it is a Java class to illustrate regular expression based parsing of HTML pages.

Update: I successfully installed Kunststoff LF.

1. I just got the Bitstream Vera fonts working on my setup. I took the easy route and just copied the *.ttf files to my JDK's font directory at /usr/java/jdk1.4.1/jre/lib/fonts (on my setup).
   Restarted JDeveloper
   Went to Tools > Preferences > Code Editor > Fonts and chose the new nice looking Monospaced font.

   Also I went and grabbed the latest Firebird trunk with GTK2+Xft support ;-) Now everything looks really nice.

   -- Rob
   

   Posted by: Rob Clevenger on September 29, 2003 08:51 PM

2. Wow! Great. It works - easy route is fine :-)

   After I started using Bitstream Vera, I've seen a role reversal with my peers. Now, I challenge them to see if they can make their Win32 UI look as good as X!

   Posted by: Babu on September 30, 2003 05:37 PM

3. Rob's site has some more entries on this:
   http://www.robsite.org/archives/000015.html
   http://www.robsite.org/archives/000014.html
   

   Posted by: Babu on September 30, 2003 05:39 PM

4. Hi babu,
   I set up JDeveloper 10g as you did on linux, but when I try to connect to mysql I get "connection refused" on port 1521. On port 3306 I get a worse error - that the driver is not appropriate or something like that. My user has full priviledges and the connection is local. Can you help?

   Posted by: Ben Tompkins on October 16, 2003 02:17 AM

5. Babu,
   Thanks for the tip. As it turned out, I forgot to add the jar file itself to the classpath...
   OK here's another one, equal in its degree of stupidity: Does JDeveloper 10g include a database or not? If so, how in general does JDeveloper database connectivity differ from general client connectivity issues? How do I tell whether a distribution of JDeveloper includes a database? The usual doc is not as far as I can see explicit on this basic point. For instance, there is no mention of a database in the "Features" section - so I first assumed there wasn't one and installed JDeveloper 10g in addition to 9i PE on Windows XP. Only after looking in task manager did I later discover TWO instances of oracle running -- but the extra instance does not show up in the services panel. Also it appears that an additional instance of Apache keeps trying to launch, causing a recurrent error message. How do I resolve this? Note that my first major question pertains to linux, my second one pertains to Window XP. I.e., I have two installations in progress on two different machines. BTW, what is your setup on Eclipse as far as database development goes. Have you found a useful plugin?

   tia,

   Ben

   Posted by: Ben Tompkins on October 16, 2003 08:53 PM

6. Ok, so I've got JDeveloper connectesd to my MySQL database, but when I try to edit the schema according to the directions in the online help (by right clicking on the table in the connection navigator) I notice that the Edit ... item is grayed out. Has anyone else had this problem ?

   Posted by: Ben Tompkins on October 16, 2003 10:36 PM

7. babu,

   I have been using Jdev quite a while. How does Eclipse compare as far as rolling EJB's and all those probs?

   Thanks
   CJS

   Posted by: Charles Sandberg on October 28, 2003 09:17 AM

8. I managed to get JDeveloper 9 to reverse engineer an ejb from a simple MySQL database. I even got it to generate a sample client application, but when I try to run the client, the JNDI connection is refused. Does anyone know of a fix for this problem?

   Posted by: Ben Tompkins on November 4, 2003 05:10 AM