The latest release of the MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench, version 3.8 GA for Eclipse 3.0, is now available for immediate download at the MyEclipse website (http://www.myeclipseide.com).

This release establishes feature parity with many tier-1 J2EE IDEs.

Key new features include all new source editors with advanced features, visual HTML and Struts RAD development tools, integrated database management tools and Hibernate O/R tools. In addition, this new release includes a large number of basic user enhancements, thus making 3.8GA a solid Enterprise J2EE solution that everyone can afford to use.

MyEclipse 3.8 includes the following feature additions and improvements:

HTML WYSIWYG Editor
  - Visual HTML Designer provides WYSIWYG development
  - real-time preview mode
  - round trip source code generation (Win32 only, Linux/Mac coming soon)
  - HTML preview mode

New JSP Editor
  - New JSP source editor
  - Syntax highlighting and code completion including custom tags
  - Native source level debugging - supports breakpoints set in JSPs and fragments
  - JSP 1.2 & 2.0 support (tagfiles support will be added shortly)
  - JSP preview mode with Struts HTML tag rendering (JSF planned)
  - Open-On feature for selected text entity such as JSP fragments, Java classes, linked CSS and Javascript files
  - File level validation and error marking
  - Real-time validation and error marking "as you type"

New XML, XSD, & DTD editors
  - Support for XSL and DTD design
  - User-extensible XML DTD/Schema catalog
  - Code completion and syntax highlighting for DTD-based or XSD-based documents
  - Formatting and real time validation "as you type"
  - Outline view with insert/delete/move node capabilities
  - Editable properties view
  - Graphical editing for XSD files
  - Generate example XML documents for any XSD file
 
New CSS and JavaScript editors
  - Smart code completion and syntax highlighting
  - Outline edit view with insert/delete/move node capabilities
  - Editable properties view
  - Open-On feature for selected text entity

Validation
  - Validate HTML, XML, XSD, DTD, JSP, XSL and XMI files

Database Explorer
  - Database browser
  - 25 predefined DB-JDBC connector profiles
  - SQL editor with code completion
  - SQL query evaluation/testing
  - Database Explorer Eclpse perspecitve

Internet Tools
  - Integrated multi-platform web browser
  - TCP/IP monitor and Internet proxy

Hibernate ORM Tools
Hibernate development tools with productivity wizards, code generation, and DB Explorer connector integration. Key features include:
  - Generation of Hibernate mapping files and corresponding Java classes directly from Database Browser
  - Simplified project and package selection for generated classes and mapping files
  - Supports composite ids and one-to-many relationships with other mapped objects
  - Designate custom base persistence class for all generated classes
  - Regenerate mapped classes at any time to synchronize with database schema changes
  - Update previously configuration file with auto-generated mappings
  - Code generation using customizable Velocity templates
  - Generated Hibernate configuration file and SessionFactory reflect proper runtime classpath-relative locations

Struts Design Tools
  - Struts designer provides graphical drag-n-drop, web flow design, and customized grid/snap/nodes that is synchronized with Struts configuration file source
  - Wizards for creating all Struts types
  - Outline view

Other Features
  - J2EE 1.4 Project support (JSTL 1.1 support to be added shortly)
  - Java Server Faces (JSF 1.1) project support
  - Sun Java System Application Server Connector added to library of over 20 supported supported application servers/versions include Tomcat, Weblogic, WebSphere, & JBoss
  - Smart Dependent Project Deployment
  - New project flexibility now enables web project to serve as as the web-context root
  - Snippet catalog with included library of HTML, JavaScript, CSS, JSP, Struts, and JSF snippets
  - Image previewer/browser presents fast thumbnail sized view of images in gif, jpg, png, bmp, and ico formats.
  - Eclipse garbage collection control reduce runtime memory requirements

Annual subscription $29.95

To learn more about MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench please visit http://www.myeclipseide.com

I am a JDeveloper user, who mostly develops smaller J2EE applications (less then 50 Session Beans per app). I like the fact that Jdeveloper handles all the deployment descriptors for me automatically. Yes I know there is XDoclet, but I'm not interested in doing any work, that does not directly relate to accomplishing my business goal. I write code then click and deploy. Works really well with JBoss, and WebLogic.

I'm interested to heard from a MyEclipseIDE user about their experience with MyEclipseIDE's ability to automatically write your deployment descriptors and deploy to your application server of choice,

Thanks,

I am a JDeveloper user, who mostly develops smaller J2EE applications (less then 50 Session Beans per app). I like the fact that Jdeveloper handles all the deployment descriptors for me automatically. Yes I know there is XDoclet, but I'm not interested in doing any work, that does not directly relate to accomplishing my business goal. I write code then click and deploy. Works really well with JBoss, and WebLogic.I'm interested to heard from a MyEclipseIDE user about their experience with MyEclipseIDE's ability to automatically write your deployment descriptors and deploy to your application server of choice,Thanks,

I use MyEclips and love it. The jsp editor/debugger is great. However, I would never depend on an IDE to generate code needd for deployment. That is just asking for problems.

MyEclipseIDE uses XDoclet to generate Deployment Descriptors. If you don't wish to do that, then I suggest staying with JDeveloper. For me, it works perfectly, as when I'm developing J2EE apps, I rarely have to change my Deployment Descriptors. Then, its just like you said, write some code, deploy, done. Definitely works with Most popular app servers, including JBoss, Weblogic, etc. I suggest you check out their demo if you have concerns.

And when you compare the prices of JDeveloper vs MyEclipseIDE...

We are using MyEclipseIDE for a while now and love this "darling" having skipped any development on JBUILDER. While the XDOCLET feature is nice to handle I miss a kind of EAR packaging wizzard, concerning dependend projects and application specific LIBs to be private to the EJBs.
In this case I have the feeling to move from writing ANT scripts towards a EAR Builder really makes life (in this case my life) easier.
Is there any effort in this direction ??? How do you deploy ???
Thx
Timo

Is there any effort in this direction ??? How do you deploy ???ThxTimo

I heard they're working on an EAR wizard.

We are using MyEclipseIDE, too. After some initial head-scratching it works fine. I love to have complete control over what's going on under the hood so the XDoclet integration is the way to go for me.
Because the deployed app (EAR) has a different structure than the Eclipse project anyway and because we're doing nightly builds and tests, we're using ANT scripts for packaging the EAR.

Matthias

I also use MyEclipse. Ant+XDoclet is also the way to go for me. I don't even understand why Ant is not the default builder in Eclipse. The other big advantage of using Ant is that it doesn't tie you to a development environment. You (or any another developer in your team) can easilly switch your developments to another IDE that supports ANT ... or even no IDE at all.
If you just need to integrate XDoclet into Eclipse, JBoss IDE is a very nice tool too : it's not just restricted to JBoss and it's free. In fact, support for XDoclet in MyEclipse is based on that one.

MyEclipse probably works fine for most users, but I had one show stopper problem with it. I literally have a few thousand JSP files in my projects (largest one has about 800 JSP files) and MyEclipse does somekind of JSP indexing. This indexing freezes the whole IDE, gobbles up all the memory (about 2Gig), and finally ends with out of memory exception. This usually happens when I open a project with JSP files. This left me with no other option but to stop using MyEclipse because I did not find a way to turn the indexing off.

MyEclipse probably works fine for most users, but I had one show stopper problem with it. I literally have a few thousand JSP files in my projects (largest one has about 800 JSP files) and MyEclipse does somekind of JSP indexing. This indexing freezes the whole IDE, gobbles up all the memory (about 2Gig), and finally ends with out of memory exception. This usually happens when I open a project with JSP files. This left me with no other option but to stop using MyEclipse because I did not find a way to turn the indexing off.

It seems that Eclipse doesnt have this problem. In my project I have 1294 JSP files and about 500 EJB's.

I literally have a few thousand JSP files in my projects (largest one has about 800 JSP files) and MyEclipse does somekind of JSP indexing. This indexing freezes the whole IDE, gobbles up all the memory ...

The JSP indexing problem existed in the initial 3.8.0 released on Aug 9. It and a few other pesky problems were resolved in the latest MyEclipse 3.8.1 release for which this ANN applies. Thank you for this feedback.