Genuitec has released version 2.5 of its MyEclipse J2EE Enterprise Workbench for the Windows and Linux platforms. Offered as a $29.95/yr subscription, the MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench provides a full featured J2EE IDE by extending the Eclipse 2.1 platform with a rich set of Web and EJB developer tools, numerous application server connectors, and exploded/packaged deployment. A one year subscription includes unlimited upgrades, free online support, and portal access to MyEclipse developer resources.

Key features of MyEclipse include:

Web Development Tools
- Smart editors with code completion and syntax coloring: JSP, HTML, XML, and CSS.
- JSP syntax validation
- native JSP source debugging - full support for JSR045.
- Customizable creation templates for JSP's, HTML, XML, Servlets, and Applets.
- Preview of JSP/HTML code in editors.
- XDoclet Support

Productivity Wizards
- Creation of Web, EAR and EJB projects.
- Java Project to Web Project enablements.
- EJB Wizards
- Sync-on-Demand automated deployment of applications to integrated servers.
- Archive-based deployment (EAR & WAR)

Application Server Integration
- Bejy, JBoss, Oracle, Orion, Tomcat, WebLogic and WebSphere.
- Integrated controls for starting, stopping servers.
- Full hot swap debugging support for deployed applications.

Packaging and Installation
- Windows and Linux support.
- Professional installer.
- Free online support.
- Documentation and tutorials.

Free 30 day trial available.

Links

Download MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench

I downloaded it and installed it last night. VERY COOL. This is a great price, too. The JSP editor by itself would be worth $30/yr.

Steve

Has anyone in this group used the Lomboz J2EE plugin suite for eclipse? If so how does it compare to this one?

Max

There were some people using both during the early access period. However with the 2.5 release now I don't see much need for Lomboz anymore now that full EJB's are in and creation of WAR and EAR files (very easily). It's quite complete.

I am a current user of Eclipse, Lomboz, MiddleGen, XDoclet and a variety of other tools. I have found Lomboz and MiddleGen to be powerful and time-saving tools. Lomboz supports EJBs, JSPs/Servlets, builds WARs and JARs, deploys to a variety of app servers, and more ... but it does not do EARs. Fussing with ANT scripts gets around this limitation.

>MiddleGen, XDoclet and a variety of other tools.

>Lomboz <elided/> does not do EARs.
> Fussing with ANT scripts gets around this limitation.

Ok, so if you don't want to have to spend hours cobbling together and configuring an environment out of a bunch of independent tools, or "fuss" with Ant scripts in order to get EAR deployment to work, you should give MyEclipse a try. Of course, if you like to cobble and fuss, it's your time; use it as you see fit.

Does any one know ,How does this compare with Pramati J2EE IDE that costs around $1000 per machine. www.pramati.com

From the threads it sounds good to hear that the tool is great with its powerful features, with a real 'developer friendly' price tag and especially the economics of using this for single as well as wide scale deployments are so compelling.

How does J2EE IDEs like Pramati studio , www.pramati.com with $1000 /seat price tag compare ?

Rob

I can't speak for Pramati but I can say that MyEclipse is a solid J2EE developers platform that will be a tier-1 IDE by the end of '03. The MyEclipse debut release focuses on providing the core tools developers require to implement a J2EE application. Subsequent theme releases will focus on enhancing MyEclipse for very specific purposes, e.g., web-service tools, database tools, MDA tools. The price/feature equation is clearly in MyEclipse favor.

Try it and see for yourself.

Wayne

That may be true, until the Eclipse project releases their Web Tools Project. After that, the commercial vendors will have to run like crazy to stay ahead and make sure they provide features that developers will pay for (since basic J2EE stuff will be part of the free environment).

The eclipse web tools project at http://www.eclipse.org/webtools/index.html will destroy any ability for companies like MyEclipse to exist in the long term. It fills a gap need right now. And, for 29$, who can beat that. But, long term viability will be an issue. I think that the MyEclipseIde guys should just contribute their stuff to the web tools project. WSAD and others will obviously add higher end J2EE and WebServices integration cababilities that are far beyond the scope of MyEclipse and will really only be required for certain speciality projects. With the new attribute oriented programming and eclipse web tools, if you can wait 6-8 months, you will not need to buy any tools like MyEclipse. My recommendation is to use Lomboz http://www.mycgiserver.com/~objectlearn/products/lomboz.html with http://www.omondo.com/ for a free quality j2ee development environment until the web tools are complete. Don't waste your money or time in the short term.

The MyEclipse cost model provides every developer and corporation an opportunity to experience Eclipse extended to support J2EE development in a commercialized, supported form. MyEclipse focuses on the details that users expect from high-end products without gouging them. Already MyEclipse is a huge success and growing rapidly for all the right reasons, which you conveniently omitted. First and foremost MyEclipse is a really good product with awesome support that is available TODAY with the capabilities developers need to be successful. And at $29.95 you can't beat it. Did I mention responsive expert support? :)

Now to your Web Tools claims. If you're part of the Lomboz or Omondo teams I can empathize with your frustration of being surpassed by MyEclipse like you were standing still. Your weakness is seeing the world as a set of static features and thinking like a cheap developer verses understanding your customer's direct and indirect needs and wants. MyEclipse operates in a paradigm that is wholly user focused. Our vision and commitment is to provide our users the best features and services with attention paid to every detail in the most rapid manner possible. Thus we have and continue to establish partnerships with a number of commercial and open-source efforts. This strategy allows us to scale at a phenomenal rate to the benefit of our users. Our rise to tier-1 IDE status will be measured in months not years.

Regarding the Eclipse Web Tools project, we expect to reap major benefits from that project, just like we do all other high-quality open source efforts. Like all of our other partners, the Web Tools project is another potential supplier of components that when integrated into MyEclipse are far more useful than in their original environments. Pretty cool! To MyEclipse users what you can expect over the next 6-9 months is rapid delivery of significant new functionality that is far beyond the scope of the Web Tools project. While Bobby patiently waits for his glorified Web Tools project and handicaps himself with Lomboz, you can be productive with MyEclipse "Web Tools" NOW. Also, you have Genuitec's commitment that future versions of MyEclipse will be compatible with the Eclipse base and Web Tools projects.

I find that your recommendation that MyEclipse users save their money and use Lomboz to be an oxymoron. You will easily spend many times more than a $29.95 MyEclipse subscription if you take Bob's poorly thought out advice just trying to keep Lomboz running. MyEclipse cost syou less than $0.10 a day and is solid supported product. Most developers would pay $10/day not to have to use incomplete tools or work with zealots that would recommend such a tools strategy.

Since Bob fired the first shot I'll go on public record and share with readers the rationale behind MyEclipse. Over the past year Genuitec's professional services sponsored Eclipse into several organizations. With no alternative we reluctantly pointed our clients to Lomboz as a low cost solution since we had no other choice. Unfortunately, in EVERY they were totally amazed by its incompleteness, poor reliability, and low quality. Not a single corporate client gave Lomboz serious consideration. As a user stated on the 2Y site today, after 18+ months Lomboz is still not ready for primetime usage. Turning the tables though, each of those companies is now taking a serious look at MyEclipse.

So I find your economics "penny wise, dollar foolish" (that's being generous considering MyEclipse cost pennies/day) and your "2 birds in the bush" wait 6-9 months to save $30 to be ludicrous and overly protective of a dying Lomboz product and an Omondo project that will have a hard go at $1500 when there are already a gazillion UML products on the market. Plus, if you consider 6 months short term and are willing to suffer inefficiencies for that duration then you are too far away from the guy that signs the checks.

To everyone else if you want to be productive today, next week, and next year then choose MyEclipse and stop wasting time with half-baked, incomplete "products".

Wayne Parrott
MyEclipse Product Manager
www.myeclipseide.com

It's a sad, sad day when a developer wastes $30 worth of time to author a post that says that the developer can save $30 on a tool that could save their company $30,000.

If it saves you time, it's the cheapest $30 you'll ever spend. Most developers waste that much on lunch or lattes in a week. We have customers that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on tools from *** (initials removed to protect the guilty) and end up with less usefulness than this.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Easily share live data across a cluster!

It is extremely unfortunate that many developers miss many of the basic tenets of software engineering by believe that hacking, rolling your own, or experimentation are what make you a good programmer. While continuous learning should never be stifled, it must be controlled when used within a corporate project (unless this type of investigation is within the charter of your project). Within the business, we have the responsibility of producing the highest quality products that are many times based upon leading edge technologies in the least amount of time.

As Wayne stated, you will not be able to understand your businesses true objectives if you “too far away from the guy that signs the checks”. Viable software development companies are not just trying to produce software that is “neat”. We produce software for our end users and the business to gain value from our products. Furthermore, for many businesses, especially software companies, our products are the life blood of our business. Software companies cannot afford on the job tinkering with development environments that will increase the time to market for their product.

One lesson that we in the Java community should learn from Microsoft is that because of the quality and tight integration of their tools, quality MS engineers are able to move more quickly than the equivalent J2EE engineer. This speed does not have too much to do with the languages, but more with the IDE environments. My hope is that with initiative such as MyEclipse, that the J2EE community can gain velocity in producing quality J2EE applications.

If MyEclipse can get you a shrink wrapped J2EE environment within minutes without all of the hassles of patching together multiple open source projects, then I say that you should embrace MyEclipse with open arms. Personally, I have spent many hours on my weekend trying to put together open source tools in order to make my eclipse environment complete enough for me to actually do work on some J2EE projects. Now that MyEclipse is available with a truly professional team of engineers delivering and supporting the product, I am throwing away my patched together eclipse environment for a more productive J2EE toolkit. To Cameron’s point, I spend more than 30$ in one week stopping at Starbucks every morning.

My Hat is off to the MyEclipse team. Keep up the great work.

Michael Sherman
Chief Technology Officer
Viewlocity

Wayne, your company has a pretty good product going. It makes development easy. There's no need to taint it by being so crass and negative about competitors' products. Propping yourself up by tearing the other guy down doesn't do anyone any good. Also, I don't think it's a good thing to boast about intending to become a tier-1 IDE...better to boast about BEING a tier-1 IDE once you actually do it.

I did have one question: do you have any plans to release a beta that tracks the Eclipse 3.0 branch, for those of us who are testing Eclipse as new versions are released? I can live with a few bugs here and there for now.

Thanks!

As a rule Genuitec does not proactively bash its competitor's products or business plans. But when posters such as Bobby Williams make faulty claims and recommendations that negatively impact MyEclipse and are just bad we are motivated to correct them. Bobby promoted a product that is inferior to MyEclipse as a cost effective alternative. I was not trying to lift MyEclipse above that product by bashing it. I was only setting the record straight. I personalized it since I have been burned by that product as have many of our customers. Our style is to be honest, accurate, and politely direct.

W.r.t. to tier-1 IDE status I was openly sharing our mission statement. I can honestly state that a number of our customers are currently evaluating the cost/benefit trade-off of MyEclipse to the big 3 IDEs (WSAD, JBuilder, IntelliJ). Our mission is to continue extending MyEclipse into an number of areas that will make converting to MyEclipse an easier decision.

Lastly, support for Eclipse Milestone builds is something we are discussing internally. We will have more to say on that topic in the near future.

Wayne Parrott
Genuitec, LLC

I totally agree..I like all features especially the Web application debugger

This paid service would avoid the open source problem of too many versions and too many different builds.
Thanks guys ...

I signed up for the annual MyEclipse membership and followed the program through EA. I find this package to be very complete and just absolutley polished down to a shine. The ability to develop your JSP/Servlets and get instant feedback on the problems you have is very nice. The instant deploy as you save your project is incredibly handy and saves ALOT of time. The integration with application servers is so easy that you could take a novice Java developer straight out of the classroom and get them to setup this integration. The install is straight forward and done in a 'best practices' way that products like PVCS Version Manager uses to integrate into Eclipse so packages don't stomp on each other. I've had the opportunity to e-mail back and forth with the staff and they are just absolutley wonderful to talk with, very supportive and helpful. Eclipse is quickly becoming a defacto standard for Java development. I could easily recommend this become the defacto J2EE addition to Eclipse. I am using this thing for production level development for a large corpate entity (quite large) and it's fitting the bill perfectly. I could easily see this thing useful for smaller shops or even one man development type scenarios. For $30 how can you go wrong? That's like a pizza night cost for massive gains in productivity. You also have a trial to go with if your still hesitant. This combined with Eclipse, pick your application server, and your done. You won't need any extra plugins or go hunting for days trying to find out "which of these are considered good quality?!?". I am so strongly confident of this, that if anyone cares to ask ANY question to clarify anything that I know about this you can email me at rodgerballard @ yahoo. I will do my best to answer any question, concern or other you might have. Enjoy!

Are there plans to support Caucho Resin?
If yes when can we expect it?

Thanks,
Yuri

Yes, a Resin connector is on the roadmap. Its delivery is 1-2 months. User's are driving the future feature sets. Therefore vote on the MyEclipse "Feature Request" forum for this connector(www.myeclipseide.com).

Wayne

I am in Ohio University, 132.235.*.*

I can you resolve your hostname.

Is there anywhere else I can download a trial version?

The IP for myeclipseide.com is 216.114.78.226

I just realized that entering the numeric IP won't work because http://www.myeclipseide.com is not the default domain for our server. Sorry for the misleading info.

I was wondering if you've incorporated any support for Struts 1.0 / 1.1.

Thanks!

They have two templates for this at the moment ...

Standard JSP using Struts 1.1
Standard JSP using Struts 1.1 with a form

I think this is bound to take the J2EE community by storm. It's well built, works with Eclipse which is quickly becoming the de-facto standard amongst java developers and has a very low price tag for a J2EE development environment. The purveyors of WSAD and WebLogic Builder must be shaking in their boots now. Awesome piece of work guys!

Looks very interesting.

What are the ".NET Features" mentioned in the roadmap on the website?

We can't say much about this at the moment. Tune in to the MyEclipse forums and we'll have more to say over the next few months.

W
www.myeclipseide.com

I would like to have the jbx import tool feature as soon as possible in MyEclipse. Jbuilder is not easy to integrate with others IDEs today.

I've been doing J2EE development for several years with a wide variety of commercial IDEs but since I've started using the combination of Eclipse and MyEclipse there is no turning back.

I tried using Lomboz initially but got tripped up with several configuration issues and ultimately could only get it to limp along with minimal features. I switched to EASIE JBoss (the MyEclipse predecessor) and found it much easier to work with as well as having better support and a broader feature set.

I've been using EASIE JBoss and now MyEclipse since January. Their Tech Support have helped me very promptly (initial responses within minutes and complete solutions the same day!) with several problems. Their support response time is faster than most enterprise level commercial products which are much more expensive.

And the timeliness of their product upgrades supporting the latest product releases such as JBoss 4.0 and Eclipse 2.1 is remarkable.

This is by far my favourite development tool!

I've not used lomboz, however I've found JBoss IDE (the jboss group's eclipse plugin) topbe very good in its its xdoclet and app server support.

I'm not sure how its feature set compares to lomboz or MyEclipse, but what it does do it does very professionally I think.

Alex,

> I've found JBoss IDE (the jboss group's eclipse plugin)
> to be very good in its its xdoclet and app server support.

The MyEclipse team definately agrees with this assessment. That's why we contacted Hans Dockter, the author of JBoss IDE, to discuss using his implementation of XDoclet support in MyEclipse. He highly recommended that we do exactly that, so we did. The MyEclipse implementation of XDoclet support is really Hans', with some integration, additional documentation, and a few usability improvements.

> I'm not sure how its feature set compares MyEclipse

MyEclipse goes far beyond JBoss IDE with it's JSP editor and debugging support, connectors for all major application servers (including JBoss), and full set of productivity wizards, among other things. I'd encourage you to give it a try and let us know what you think on our forums.

Regards,
Todd
MyEclipse Team

With Eclipse Web Group, this will be obsolete soon:

http://www.eclipse.org/webtools/index.html

They are not starting from scratch either.

Bet you a dollar you're wrong.

$0.25 1)MyEclipse is NOW! Web Tools is still organizing. Qualify SOON == ?
$0.25 2)MyEclipse is much larger than Web Tools (check out roadmap).
$0.25 3)MyEclipse will adopt, extend and innovate all worthy Web Tool elements.
$0.25 4)We didn't start from scratch and we are not standing still. ;)
------
$1.00 USD

Stop thinking so narrowly. The term "The Eclipse Economy" will soon become part of IT vernacular. Remember you heard it from the MyEclipse/Genuitec team first.

Wayne
www.myeclipseide.com

Roland: With Eclipse Web Group, this will be obsolete soon

Dank Sie Gott! Then all those idiots using this tool will have wasted a whole $30. </sarcasm>

Can someone please explain why it is such a crime against humanity for this company to charge $30 a year for a handy development tool?

Roland, as an employee of IBM maybe you can answer, did this company steal something? Or do something unethical? Or are they taking advantage of the open source Eclipse project?

I'm just at a loss to understand the negative vibes on this one.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Easily share live data across a cluster!

Ronald,

Your post may have done more damage to Eclipse and IBM than you could ever imagine. The Eclipse community has been asking for a sign of progress on the Web Tools project, only now to be told "thank you for your time, we will just take it from here". Eclipse foundation is community participation. It's based on the belief that a project of this magnitude can only endure when a large community lends its time and energy to a worthy cause. Trust and belief in the common good are the pillars that keep people coming back to help and to contribute their time and resources.

IBM's biggest challenge today is shaking the perception that Eclipse is a self-serving vehicle. The Eclipse leadership team is doing everything in their power to bring key J2EE vendors into the community and to convince them of the greater good. Your irresponsible post will undoubtedly set these efforts back several steps.

Lastly, Assuming you know something about the Web Tooling project, which I doubt, you have a professional responsibility to refrain from airing this knowledge out for everyone to see. Equally important, Genuitec (the parent company behind MyEclipse) is a steward member of the Eclipse board, and we don't expect our partners to slander our name or our products to satisfy some childish taunting urge.

As a quick update to this thread Genuitec has recently released MyEclipse 2.6 which now includes support for Windows, Linux, and now Mac OS/X. Now Mac developers have a low cost professional J2EE IDE.

In addition to Mac support, a Jetty connector has been added along with improvements in JSP editing and project deployment tools. Lastly, support for Eclipse 3.0M2 has been made available to subscribers.

To learn more visit http://www.myeclipseide.com

Wayne Parrott
MyEclipse Team