The Netbeans IDE, 4.1 release candidate, is available for download.

This release focuses quite a bit on J2EE technologies including web applications and EJB, with the Sun Application Server 8 being bundled with the IDE, including the J2EE verifier. The EJB modules include the ability to declare EJBs as web service points from the application server, so it's very useful for discovering what the J2EE stack offers, at the very least.

The Netbeans platform is not being updated in this release.

The final release is scheduled for mid-May 2005, and the Netbeans team is requesting feedback in preparation for the release.

Resources:

• Netbeans 4.1 knowledge base
• Release Notes

I have been using Netbeans Beta 4.1 in LNX environment and I must admit it is a pleasure using this new IDE. Hard core eclipse users must give this one a fair shot as well. There is no reason to complain that ugly looking Metal UI is an issue because the "ocean" UI is a really well done. There are all sort of plugins available including one to import eclipse project as Netbean project...

Give it a shot and I am sure you will love it...

I have been using Netbeans Beta 4.1 in LNX environment and I must admit it is a pleasure using this new IDE. Hard core eclipse users must give this one a fair shot as well. There is no reason to complain that ugly looking Metal UI is an issue because the "ocean" UI is a really well done. There are all sort of plugins available including one to import eclipse project as Netbean project...Give it a shot and I am sure you will love it...

Eclipse users ought to give Netbeans a shot? Why don't we all spend a significant chunk of our time trying 5 different ide's while Visual Studio 2005 beats the hell out of all of them.

I for one support Eclipse. It's got a lot of support from various entities.

I for one support Eclipse. It's got a lot of support from various entities.

In all fairness - and without endorsing Netbeans myself - I should point out that Eclipse isn't unique in having "a lot of support from various entities." If that's your criteria, Netbeans might be worth a look, too, since it has support from various entities too.

The eclipse foundation is a who's who in technology:
http://eclipse.org/org/index.html

The netbeans foundation is more of a who? in technology:
http://www.netbeans.org/about/third-party.html

Visual Studio 2005 beats the hell out of all of them.

Yeah. I love VS's refactoring support.

And hiding the code tree while dugging is an idea whose time has come.

Visual Studio 2005 beats the hell out of all of them.

Yeah. I love VS's refactoring support.And hiding the code tree while dugging is an idea whose time has come.

Not to turn this into a "my IDE can beat up your IDE" flamewar, but I understand IntelliJ's refactoring capabilities far outweight that of VS's.

DISCLAIMER: I've never used VS, but have heard this from several people who have used both IntelliJ and VS.

I wasn't being serious. I'm not a big fan of Visual Studio in its .Net incarnation.

I wasn't being serious. I'm not a big fan of Visual Studio in its .Net incarnation.

I am a Java pro that had to switch to Visual Studio 2003, it's like taking the blue pill... total horror. C# is a nice language but I am really crying over the state of the IDE. I have tried some other IDE's for .NET as wel but they are all to cry for. JetBrains has a plugin for Visual Studio and I think I will use that, there is also a new IDE called X-Develop that I want to try out... but still: I miss Eclise, Netbeans and even JBuilder.

We use Visual Studio, NetBeans and Eclipse at my job.

VS is really getting long in the tooth. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft can swallow their pride and steal the ideas the open source community has come up with to improve development. Specifically refactoring and test-driven development. These should be out-of-the-box features of any serious modern day IDE.

Eclipse simply doesn't do very much outside of refactoring. I'm forced to search the net looking for plugins to do basic tasks, to write Ant scripts by hand to do automated testing, and so on. I don't want to spend my time doing work for the IDE. I want my IDE to do work for me.

NetBeans is a little rough around the edges at times, but in general offers the tools I need to do my job. It provides things like generating Ant scripts, providing visual GUI editing, and packaging war files. Stuff developers actually do. It also provides refactoring and JUnit integration, which every modern day IDE should have.

Did you ever tried to write a C# app in VS 2003?

It's a pain!!! How can that thing be so "productive"?

I'm using Borland Delphi 2005 for C# programming and it is really very good, at least better than VS.

But I still miss Eclipse and NetBeans...

About Eclipse:

Eclipse simply doesn't do very much outside of refactoring. I'm forced to search the net looking for plugins to do basic tasks, to write Ant scripts by hand to do automated testing, and so on. I don't want to spend my time doing work for the IDE.

Did you try http://www.myeclipseide.com/ ? It's a distribution of open source plugins around Eclipse.

I'm using it very often for j2ee development (jsp edition, step by step debugging in jsp, hot deployment to most of the application servers, struts plugins etc). Really changed my life, comes for 30$/yr. Check it out, definitely worth it.

About VisualStudio.Net 2003 :
Clearly VS.Net 2003 doesn't reach the level of refactoring of Eclipse. But adding a small add-in such as Resharper (JetBrains) changes the things a lot!. Looking forward vs.net 2005...

Thibaut
http://www.dotnetguru2.org/tbarrere

I wasn't being serious. I'm not a big fan of Visual Studio in its .Net incarnation.

Haha, "that'll teach ya" to be a wise-ass on these soap opera forums.

I don't think TSS should be engaging in gossip -- especially from the Register of all places. Let the company do a press release and explain their actions instead of speculate. There are a lot of shops who standardize on toolkits with JBuilder and to extrapolate and infer anything else than that at this point is irresponsible even with the weak disclaimer.

Borland was one of the founding members of Eclipse so I think their interest or expansion of interest isn't something new or surprising.

I don't think TSS should be engaging in gossip -- especially from the Register of all places. Let the company do a press release and explain their actions instead of speculate.

Fair point. However, enough people were mentioning it - all reporting on the Register's original article - that I felt that it'd be valid to try to set valid perspective: note that my posting refers to the Register in detail, and I'm not saying that the Register's report was accurate. Yet.

I felt it was newsworthy, even if it's still at "rumor" status. I accept that it's not up to my standards, but that's why I wanted to make sure the post was properly qualified.

Visual Studio 2005 beats the hell out of all of them.

Yeah. I love VS's refactoring support.And hiding the code tree while dugging is an idea whose time has come.

Not to turn this into a "my IDE can beat up your IDE" flamewar, but I understand IntelliJ's refactoring capabilities far outweight that of VS's. DISCLAIMER: I've never used VS, but have heard this from several people who have used both IntelliJ and VS.

Notepad's refactoring is as good as VS.Net 2003. 2005 adds a some refactoring.

For a certain class of things, VS.Net is better. But for many things, VS.Net has a long way to go. (Yes, I use VS.Net) Usually, when doing a full blown app, VS.Net "beats the hell" out of me.

Why don't we all spend a significant chunk of our time trying 5 different ide's

Actually, it's not as difficult as it sounds, and I think the average developer would gain something by at least trying the major IDEs. I put together a screencast demoing IntelliJ IDEA for those who haven't tried it yet.

I hate search for plugins in Eclipse and after discover that they are limited (web development).

I will keep with Netbeans because this.

It would be nice to have the possibility to integrate with other J2EE AS, not only Sun's.

Looks like it is now starting the usual Eclipse vs Netbeans flame... I have been using both, my impression is that after the release of NB 4 the gap with Eclipse is not that high. Comparing to Eclipse now NB even has a slightly cleaner user interface, IMHO.
By the way, market competition is good also for open-source IDEs: Eclipse will improve because NB will do, and the reverse.

Cheers

It would be nice to have the possibility to integrate with other J2EE AS, not only Sun's.

<br>
Take a look at :<br><br>
  NetBeans 4.1 Integration with JBoss<br>
  Monitor HTTP Requests on JBoss 4 from NetBeans IDE 4.1<br>
  Remote Debugging from NetBeans IDE 4.1 to JBoss<br>
  Integrating NetBeans with other J2EE Server Vendors<br>
  Integrating JRun 4.0 with NetBeans IDE 4.1<br>
<br>
Geertjan's blog is an excellent resource on this topic.<br>
NetBeans allows integration with other app servers. It also does a very nice job integrating with Ant generally - as in here.
<br>
Hope this helps.
Charles

Has anyone had any luck using the new profiler? I d/l Netbeans 4.1 beta and Profiler M6 to give it a shot, but had no luck running my app which uses Hibernate 1.6. I kept getting ClassCastExceptions down in the Hibernate code, which are not present when using the regular jvm.

Though I liked the UI of the Netbeans profiler, I fell back to the JDeveloper 10G profiler, which runs the code without any problems. Anyone else see this problem?

Thanks,
Rich

I haven't tried the 4.1 stuff yet. I'm waiting for the final release before I upgrade.

The profiler in 4.0 is a beta product and is not perfect. But I believe their support is very proactive in working with developers to iron out bugs. You can try writing them at mishadmitriev@netbeans.org

Hi Rich,

Sorry I've just seen this discussion for the first time. We would appreciate if you tell us about your problem in more detail - please e-mail feedback at profiler dot netbeans dot org.

A couple of possible tips that come to mind after reading your initial description:

1. Our modified VM is based on JDK 1.4.2_04. Some recent products for Java are known to work only on specific JDK update releases, e.g. "JDK 1.4.2_06 or newer". That may be the case with Hibernate - you may want to check the docs. And/or you may experiment with copying the JFluid VM's only modified library (jvm.dll or libjvm.so, depending on your OS) into a JDK installation that is known to work with Hibernate. Mail us if you would like more details.

2. You can try to run it with JDK 6 (Mustang).

Regards,

Misha Dmitriev
JFluid/NetBeans Profiler Team

I consider myself objective: I was an happy Eclipse user from its inception, but due to having problems with it under Fedora Core 1 (Linux) - memory leaks, unexplainable freezes, etc., I decided to switch (reluctantly) to Netbeans (4.1 beta).

Guess what: to my surprise, I'm very satisfied, I don't miss Eclipse (except for the more advanced code completion, maybe...). Fast startup, fast UI, integration with Ant, a-la-Eclipse project view... Very impressive. I'm also much more inclined to develop Swing-based UI after seeing how Swing performs under Netbeans (as fast as Eclipse's SWT, if you ask me).

Thus, good job, keep it up.

download eclipse and try to code an ejb and deploy it to any j2ee app server - sorry, myriad of plugins required (or pay myeclipse?).

download netbeans and try this exercise - (like microsoft ;-) it just works :-)

download eclipse and try to code an ejb and deploy it to any j2ee app server - sorry, myriad of plugins required (or pay myeclipse?).download netbeans and try this exercise - (like microsoft ;-) it just works :-)

Also consider SUN JAVA Creator:
- create entity EJB in NB from db schema
- wrap it by DAO
- create session EJB in NB by wizard
- wrap it by BD
- add JNDILocator for performance
- create JSF JSP page in Creator with a table and 3 buttons insert, update, delete
- connect JSF page bean with your BD

in 10/20 minutes you have a CRUD for a single table
-> RAD
-> separation of presentation / business / persistence logic
-> DAO abstraction for maximal performance (OR mapping / JDBC SQL / JDBC stored procedures / JCA)
-> easy migration to EJB3
-> MVC (in JSF) for presentation logic

Simple like Visal Basic with J2EE performance .... :)

Simple like Visal Basic with J2EE performance .... :)

If you are refering to EJB performance I wouldn't be shouting it from the rooftops if I were you.

--b

Simple like Visal Basic with J2EE performance .... :)

If you are refering to EJB performance I wouldn't be shouting it from the rooftops if I were you.--b

I don't see many reports of performance problems with Session Beans, or Message-driven Beans. Perhaps you mean just Entity Beans? Even then, performance issues seem to be mainly with CMP.... perhaps criticising the performance of all EJBs based just on problems CMP Entity Beans is a bit too broad?

Simple like Visal Basic with J2EE performance .... :)

If you are refering to EJB performance I wouldn't be shouting it from the rooftops if I were you.--b

I don't see many reports of performance problems with Session Beans, or Message-driven Beans. Perhaps you mean just Entity Beans? Even then, performance issues seem to be mainly with CMP.... perhaps criticising the performance of all EJBs based just on problems CMP Entity Beans is a bit too broad?

Hi Steve,

Do not tell me you do not remember this one:
http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=28804

Best regards

Hi Steve,Do not tell me you do not remember this one:
http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=28804
Best regards

I stand corrected.

Simple like Visal Basic with J2EE performance .... :)

If you are refering to EJB performance I wouldn't be shouting it from the rooftops if I were you.--b

I refer you to a benchmark conducted by the Middleware Company in June 2003:
www.gotdotnet.com/team/compare/Middleware30.pdf
One page 49 you will find a chart comparing the average per second thoughput of different approaches. Here are the results:

(Average Web Pages Processed) Per Second
and
Throughput (Average Orders Placed) Per Second

The J2EE-SERVLET-JSP codebase on
J2EE App Server X 1025 204
The J2EE-EJB-CMP codebase on
J2EE App Server X 1150 228
The J2EE-SERVLET-JSP codebase on
J2EE App Server Y 392 78
The J2EE-EJB-CMP codebase on
J2EE App Server Y 451 90
The .NET-C# codebase on
Microsoft .NET Using SQL Server 1136 226
The .NET-C# codebase on Microsoft .NET Using Oracle 848 168

The highest average thoughput (and therefore highest total daily throughput) went to a J2EE app server using EJB. Not just session beans but CONTAINER MANAGED ENTITY BEANS. The same appserver using only servlets and JSP was slower.

Simple like Visal Basic with J2EE performance .... :)

If you are refering to EJB performance I wouldn't be shouting it from the rooftops if I were you.--b

I refer you to a benchmark conducted by the Middleware Company in June 2003:www.gotdotnet.com/team/compare/Middleware30.pdfOne page 49 you will find a chart comparing the average per second thoughput of different approaches. Here are the results:(Average Web Pages Processed) Per SecondandThroughput (Average Orders Placed) Per SecondThe J2EE-SERVLET-JSP codebase onJ2EE App Server X 1025 204The J2EE-EJB-CMP codebase onJ2EE App Server X 1150 228The J2EE-SERVLET-JSP codebase onJ2EE App Server Y 392 78The J2EE-EJB-CMP codebase onJ2EE App Server Y 451 90The .NET-C# codebase onMicrosoft .NET Using SQL Server 1136 226The .NET-C# codebase on Microsoft .NET Using Oracle 848 168The highest average thoughput (and therefore highest total daily throughput) went to a J2EE app server using EJB. Not just session beans but CONTAINER MANAGED ENTITY BEANS. The same appserver using only servlets and JSP was slower.

sure ... The marketing department is down the corridor, second door on the left. Can you close the door on your
way back out please ?

--b

>sure ... The marketing department is down the corridor, second door on the left. Can you close the door on yourway back out please ? --b

The FUD department is in the basement. Next time you want to prove something about performance you need to provide some benchmark results to back up your claims.

>sure ... The marketing department is down the corridor, second door on the left. Can you close the door on yourway back out please ? --b

The FUD department is in the basement. Next time you want to prove something about performance you need to provide some benchmark results to back up your claims.

Yeah, I'll provide them when I can pay for them, in the meantime I'll just go on my own experience and that of just about anyone I know who's ever worked with them .... ejb 2.1 entity beans are rubbish.

I am very excited about RC1 for NetBeans 4.1 as I am excited about every previous version. To provide a free/open-source IDE for Java that provides cutting-edge features missing in some commercial products (WSAD comes to mind) is quite incredible.

RC1 added class hyper-link support, which is great, but I really need multi-monitor support for NetBeans so I can see different aspects of the same project on different screens. I am wondering whether there is such feature in Netbeans?

Simple like Visal Basic with J2EE performance .... :)

If you are refering to EJB performance I wouldn't be shouting it from the rooftops if I were you.--b

I refer you to a benchmark conducted by the Middleware Company in June 2003:www.gotdotnet.com/team/compare/Middleware30.pdfOne page 49 you will find a chart comparing the average per second thoughput of different approaches. The highest average thoughput (and therefore highest total daily throughput) went to a J2EE app server using EJB. Not just session beans but CONTAINER MANAGED ENTITY BEANS. The same appserver using only servlets and JSP was slower.

sure ... The marketing department is down the corridor, second door on the left. Can you close the door on yourway back out please ? --b

Bryan,

TSS published recently that BEA CMP Entity EJB 2.1 can be faster than Hibernate.

Oracle's CMP EJB2.1 are powered by Toplink, SUN's by JDO. Are these technologies considered also as slow???

Also was published on TSS that SF Session EJB has similar performance and scalability as the HTTP session.

Do YOU know ANY technical reason, why EJB3 or Spring/Hibernate containers should be much more faster than EJB2.1 containers??? E.g. try to explain me, why a local invocation under transaction and security context is going to be much more faster in EJB3.

I understand that these days is very COOL to criticize EJB2.1, but still I would like to see some TECHNICAL justification for sayings like that.

Thank you in advance.

If you are refering to EJB performance I wouldn't be shouting it from the rooftops if I were you.--b

What about the famous “EJB invocation overhead” then? From our observations, the cost overhead of
invoking and Enterprise JavaBean is actually quite low because invoking the container generated
EJBObject and related helper objects are all static method invocations that are handled quite efficiently
(and often inlined) by the JVM. Similarly, even the much maligned Entity Bean performed quite well
because they were used in cases where they were appropriate (retrieval and display of single rows with
significant opportunities for container caching) and bypassed in cases where they would be a hindrance
(insertion of a complex set of rows like orders with line items while simultaneously updating inventory).

http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/compare/Middleware30.pdf

Eclipse Web Tools are providing support for Web and J2EE development, and there is a bundled download.

If you are chasing plugins and loose to much time you may want to try Yoxos, it is an open source Eclipse distribution (community edition is for free and contains Web Tools and much more).

Web Tools Version 1.0 Milestone 3) download:

Eclipse+Web Tools+EMF+GEF+JEM+Xerces

A new milestone (M4) build es expected for this friday.

Jochen (contributor to Eclipse Web Tools)
Innoopract - Yoxos the Eclipse distribution

download eclipse and try to code an ejb and deploy it to any j2ee app server - sorry, myriad of plugins required (or pay myeclipse?).download netbeans and try this exercise - (like microsoft ;-) it just works :-)

Eclipse Web Tools are providing support for Web and J2EE development, and there is a bundled download.

Maybe it is just a first glance at the page, but it is full of promises and proposed milestones. To use what is available would require a backward step in Eclipse 3.1 version, degrading Java 5.0 support.

I really can't see the point: NetBeans delivers this functionality right now. Current development can't be done with promised future functionality. I'm afraid that this has been my experience with Eclipse for a while now - too much of what I need is not quite ready yet.

Maybe it is just a first glance at the page, but it is full of promises and proposed milestones. To use what is available would require a backward step in Eclipse 3.1 version, degrading Java 5.0 support.

Web Tools M4 will support Eclipse 3.1M6 - I should have mentioned that in my previous post.

I really can't see the point: NetBeans delivers this functionality right now. Current development can't be done with promised future functionality. I'm afraid that this has been my experience with Eclipse for a while now - too much of what I need is not quite ready yet.

I thought this thread was about a "Release Candidate" for Netbeans? If you are open to use non-release versions of software, then you are fine with Web Tools - the milestone builds, not only promises.

I don't want to get into a Eclipse vs. Netbeans, it is only my impression that many people are not aware that Eclipse is providing support for web development.

I thought this thread was about a "Release Candidate" for Netbeans? If you are open to use non-release versions of software, then you are fine with Web Tools - the milestone builds, not only promises. I don't want to get into a Eclipse vs. Netbeans, it is only my impression that many people are not aware that Eclipse is providing support for web development.

Web tools for NetBeans are not release candidates. They have been available in stable versions for some time. This release candidate for NetBeans just adds new features.

Maybe I am picking up the wrong message from the Eclipse website, but what I see is a lot of projects that 'aim to provide' features. It's mostly all future tense. I'm not finding it easy to determine what is relatively stable and supported right now. Maybe this is just a matter of better promotion of the work being needed.

A new milestone (M4) build es expected for this friday.Jochen (contributor to Eclipse Web Tools)

I just hope it looks nothing like Lomboz.

Netbeans is on the verge of release while Eclipse is still working on milestones. Eclipse is supposed to have so much support backing etc. but it always seems to be trying to catch up to features already in Netbeans.

I'll certainly give Eclipse another look if the Web Tools Project delivers, but by then Netbeans will probably have another half dozen extra features.

Eclipse is supposed to have so much support backing etc. but it always seems to be trying to catch up to features already in Netbeans.

In some ways. Eclipse has always had good refactoring facilities. It is only recently that NetBeans has largely caught up in this respect. Now that it has, I can't see any significant advantage in Eclipse.

While NetBeans supports J2EE development and WebServices(which is great) out of the box, it still has to go a long way in the following areas:

1. Refactoring - When compared to Eclipse almost primitive.
2. Code completion - takes as much as 2 minutes once you press Ctrl + Space.
3. Eclipse can be configured to display compiler errors and warnings. this is a very useful feature I miss in NetBeans.

While NetBeans supports J2EE development and WebServices(which is great) out of the box, it still has to go a long way in the following areas:1. Refactoring - When compared to Eclipse almost primitive.

It has all I normally need. If you want more, there is the RefactorIt plugin...

2. Code completion - takes as much as 2 minutes once you press Ctrl + Space.

That is an initial loading time. After that it can be fast.

3. Eclipse can be configured to display compiler errors and warnings. this is a very useful feature I miss in NetBeans.

Indeed, but I think this is more than made up for by the powerful Ant integration in NetBeans.

I think these differences are nothing compared to the absence of J2EE, J2ME and Swing support as shipped in Eclipse.

I am an Eclipse user. The main problem with Eclipse is having to download the goodies individually.

I give Netbeans 4.1 a spin and IMHO, Netbeans has came a long way. It's really cool to JSP syntax hightlighting, visual editor, and profiler out of the box.

However, I still miss the following feature available in eclipse
- better refactoring
- correction suggestion (just press Ctrl+1 and select solution from list)
- tool integration (I miss being able to click on an icon to open up explorer to the directory containing the current file)

I think the most promising aspect is the speed at which Netbeans is being developing. Netbeans 3.4 was not about to win any awards for usability. Fast forward two years and Netbeans 4.1 is one of the best IDE's I've ever seen.

The intersting part is that 4.1 is being released only 4 or 5 months after 4.0 with a raft of new features built in (not even mentioning those added to previous releases):
-WebServices support
-EJB support
-Excellent profiler (works with Mustang snapshots, 1.4.2 and 1.5.0_04 (when it is released)).
-Visual J2ME development
-Refactoring
-Fixed the default font size
-New navigator member and inheritance hierarch views
-Support for remote servers
-Regular expression search
-Better support for managing external libraries

Reportedly a revolutionary GUI designer is in the works, along with work on JDNC integration. It runs very nicely on the Mustang snapshot builds (no more greyrect!). A number of nice improvements for Swing are in the pipeline too:
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2SE/Desktop/mustang/index.html

... sucks out of the box and you are left to your own devices to scour for plugins which in many cases do not exist yet (web development) or are of abysmal quality.

Many Eclipse users fall back to recommending myeclipse. Fine, it's a good IDE, but now it is no longer free nor open source, nor being developed particularly quickly. And it still can't do proper web development and has various other shortcomings.

For my needs I am using Eclipse for years at work and still use JDeveloper for my own projects, having tried most other IDEs out there.

I understand Netbeans has some of the same things going for it as jdev and I look forward to checking it out.

How's the JFluid integration in the latest Netbeans? Anyone care to share their experience. That's one feature of netbeans that appeals to me alot.

peter

How's the JFluid integration in the latest Netbeans? Anyone care to share their experience. That's one feature of netbeans that appeals to me alot.peter

The latest version is very good. There is an installer which adds the plugin to Netbeans. It works with various JDK's:
-1.4.2 (modified version comes with the profiler)
-1.5.0_04 (not sure if this has been released yet by Sun)
-Mustang snapshot builds
It's a matter of selecting the correct JDK version for your project and clicking "profile".

They have all the details here along with screenshots:
http://profiler.netbeans.org/
The screenshots are a bit out of date though (with NetBeans 3.6). V4.x looks a lot better.
http://profiler.netbeans.org/images/shot10-m2.png

News about the latest milestone is here:
http://profiler.netbeans.org/docs/help/whatsnew-m6.html

they have also added a VisualGC plugin:
http://profiler.netbeans.org/visualgc/index.html
Screenshot:
http://profiler.netbeans.org/visualgc/img/visualgc2.png

I had problems getting previous milestones to work, but the latest version looks good.

I'll have to try that out. It probably won't replace OptimizeIt for me, but having another way to profile my apps is a good thing.

peter

I was able to use the JFluid JVM to run Tomcat and produce the various reports. To do this you change a line in catalina.bat and then use a Wizard in NetBeans to connect to the running Tomcat instance. The process was pretty easy and the information produced was what I consider to be professional quality.

But JFluid is still a beta product. There are shortcomings. For example, at our shop we are writing an app in Java 1.4 and another in Java 1.5. JFluid does not yet support Java 1.5.

When JFluid is out of beta, I think it will be a great addition to the NetBeans IDE. But right now it's still beta. You can use it productively, but don't be suprised to find a few "gotchas" here and there.