Lomboz is a free Eclipse (v2.1.1 and 3.0M2) plugin for J2EE developers. The tool follows a simple principle: "No magic tricks". Lomboz is integrated with many popular open source J2EE tools such as: Jasper, XDoclet, Axis and Ant. And naturally Eclipse and the Eclipse Java Development Toolkit (JDT). Lomboz implements an end-to-end J2EE application development philosophy supporting the complete development cycle: Code, deploy, test and debug.

The main features are:
Wizards for rapid coding: Containers, Servlets, JSPs, and EJBs

o Flexibility to manipulate the launching and deployment behaviors by allowing developers to modify corresponding XML scripts

o J2EE Project Outlining View: Allowing developers to view and manipulate containers in projects

o EJB code generators

o New: Improved EJB and XDoclet wizards .

A whole new JSP editor with

o Java" Servlet and Template previews

o JSP and HTML code assist with syntax checking and highlighting

o Tracking of JSP errors with standard Eclipse problem markers

o New: The ability to edit a JSP file regardless of how it is packaged in web modules.

o New: Code assist for taglibs.

The most complete Application Server support

o Application server launchers and stoppers for and almost any J2EE compliant server including:
JBoss, Resin, Tomcat, JRun, BEA WebLogic Server, IBM WebSphere, Oracle 9iAS, Orion

o Manage and launch multiple application-server configurations inside Eclipse in Run or Debug modes

o JSP debugging for JBoss, Resin, Orion, Oracle, Tomcat and BEA WebLogic Server

o Manage multiple Web , EJB and Application (EAR) modules inside the same project.

o Ability to target multiple application servers from the same project

Web Services Support

o Web Services wizards

o Web Services code generators

New: EAR support. Create application archives quickly and deploy them on application servers using Lomboz actions. A graphical application.xml editor allows you to edit the contents of an application rapidly.
 
Lomboz has been developed by people who have build real J2EE systems, a plug-in that does not tell you how to do things. It does what you tell it to do.

LOMBOZ is available at www.objectlearn.com

Hi

We have been lomboz for our J2EE projects and find it a great plugin . As of LOMBOZ 2.1.02 we could not deploy against weblogic 8.1 and were limited to weblogic 7.0 (of course we had Ant to the rescue). Does this latest version 2.1.1 support weblogic 8.1 ??

Thanks in advance

Manas

PN - we have been using Eclipse 2.1.0

I think it does support WebLogic 8.1. We used the previous version with WebLogic 8.1. All you have to do is to change the environment variable to point to your WebLogic 8.1 installation. Everything else remains the same.

Lomboz 2.1.1 and 3.0M2 supports the following servers:

. BEA WebLogic Server 6.x, 7.x and 8.x
. JBoss 2.x 3.0x and 3.2.x
. Tomcat 4.0x and 4.1.x
. IBM WebSphere v50.x
. JRun v4
. Oracle 9iAS
. Orion 2.0.2
. Resin 2.1 and 3.0

There are also not so well tested configurations such as the ATG Dynamo

This is a very useful feature and and a big advantage to our development team which deploys apps. on multiple server environment of our clients and it must be a cost effective proposition too. We use Jetty and JBoss a lot.

We were earlier investgating cost effective IDEs and we figured out that JBuilder and IBM Visual Age doesnt support multiple server deployments and also an IDE from an Indian Java firm whose IDE also doesnt support the variety as offered by Lombaz and the latest versions of Application servers they claim to support. Further more all these tools have been expensive.

Lombaz seems to be a good tool for all the developers to try!

Lomboz 2.1.1 and 3.0M2 supports the following servers:

. BEA WebLogic Server 6.x, 7.x and 8.x
. JBoss 2.x 3.0x and 3.2.x
. Tomcat 4.0x and 4.1.x
. IBM WebSphere v50.x
. JRun v4
. Oracle 9iAS
. Orion 2.0.2
. Resin 2.1 and 3.0

There are also not so well tested configurations such as the ATG Dynamo

I tried lomboz with websphere 5.0. I got the server to run after I set the installed JRE to the one in websphere installation. When I tried deploying to the server it copies the .war to a $webModulesDeployDirectory which has the value ${wasHome}/AppServer/${cellName}/DefaultApplication.ear in webspher50.server. I havent specified a context root anywhere so how do i access the page? The deployed war file does not contain ibm-web-bnd.xmi and ibm-web-ext.xmi. Arent these necessary for proper deployment? From the administrative console the war does not look like it has been deployed. Can anyone tell me what is wrong?

How many people will still use use lomboz now that MyEclipse has (what it seems like) a richer offering?
Its not free but just about is.
just want to see what others think

-j

I use Lomboz with eclipse , I tried MyEclipse and I will continue to use Lomboz. Why schould I pay when I get a better plugin for free? TO the MyEclipse Fans : Why should I use MyEclipse?

What does this LOMBOZ deliver in addition to functionality easily available through plain XDoclet and JBOSS IDE.
The only difference i see so far (from the demo) is that i don't have to remember exact XDoclet tags' syntax.

yes, i'm also wondering why people would like to pay for MyEclipse.

The JSP editor doesn't have refactoring capabilities. This would be a nice feature

when could we build a ejb in WYSIWYG env when we using eclipse?

jbuilder and websphere can do it

when can eclipse do it?

i wish eclipse will be better tommorrow!

The Lomboz web site (http:/www.objectlearn.com) is down. When will it be back so I can use their tutorials? Thanks.

Tom