TheServerSide and BEA have come together to offer TSS readers BEA Workshop Studio 3.3 (download from here), normally $899 USD, for $99 USD until May 31, 2007. This is part of what will become integrated with Workshop for WebLogic 10 (announced yesterday on TSS), and contains many of the same features. The upgrade to 10.1 Studio is included for this price, so if you purchase 3.3 now, you'll be able to upgrade. This is an offer specific to TSS readers. Go to the BEA shopping cart (Workshop 3.3 will already be selected), enter code "TSS992007" for the discount, and enjoy!

hi there, Can someone(from, say, BEA) post info as to what features this has for web development ? Also, is it useful for POJO and JSP development/debugging on Tomcat ? Can I do remote debug of Tomcat and other servers using this ? How does it compare to eclipse as far as setting up projects with various possible file structures ? Thank you, BR, ~A

hi there,

Can someone(from, say, BEA) post info as to what features this has for web development ?

Also, is it useful for POJO and JSP development/debugging on Tomcat ?

Can I do remote debug of Tomcat and other servers using this ?

How does it compare to eclipse as far as setting up projects with various possible file structures ?

Thank you,

BR,
~A

I'll take those questions in order, but the best way to answer it is for you to check out the online demos and see for yourself, or download a 30 day trial. 1. For web development, a listing of features can be found here. The quick version is that Studio offers the best WYSIWYG editing for web development around, previewing without a server. Together with AppXRay dependency analysis for JSP/JSTL, Struts/Tiles, EJB3/Hibernate, and JSF, Studio will catch most errors without you every having to deploy, saving lengthy develop-deploy-debug cycles. 2. For POJO/JSP/JSTL development, BEA Workshop Studio can function equally well on Tomcat, Websphere, JBoss, Resin, and Jetty. 3. The Studio JSP debugger is significantly enchanced over the one that ships with Eclipse/WTP, and is equally capable on all the platforms mentioned in #2 above (including weblogic server). 4. As far as setting up projects with various file structures, WebLogic Server users can take advantage of Web Folder Mapping, which allows you to assemble your source files in a folder organization that matches the needs of your development team, not in a structure required by the server or the IDE. With the Web Folder Mapping feature, you can arrange your source code files as you wish. The only change to your process is that when you build a project in the IDE, you must specify the folders that map into the project. All IDE features then work transparently with the mapped files, including code completion and error checking, building, deploying, testing and debugging. More information is available here. -Pieter Humphrey, BEA Systems

The quick version is that Studio offers the best WYSIWYG editing for web development around, previewing without a server.

That's a bold statement! :-) Eclipse-based WYSIWYG editors just don't compare with Adobe tools for creative power, sophistication, usability, and design-time experience. I used to spend a lot of time playing with Eclipse plugins, WTP, etc. to get a decent WYSIWYG editor. Then I decided a much better use of time would be to add JSF support to Dreamweaver. Telling someone to use an imperative programming tool for Web design is like going to a mechanic for dental work; he can get the job done, but it won't look pretty! :-) I love Eclipse, and BEA Workshop looks like a good product. I would consider using it for Java programming, debugging, etc. but not for Web UI design. Why not separate concerns and have separate tools for design and development? Besides, if you follow MVC best practices, you shouldn't need a JSP debugger! :-) Ian Hlavats JSFToolbox - Design JSF Pages in Dreamweaver

I would consider using it for Java programming, debugging, etc. but not for Web UI design.

Why not separate concerns and have separate tools for design and development?

If things were all in one tool, how could we do a better job of Web UI design? What features would you like to see added? br

The quick version is that Studio offers the best WYSIWYG editing for web development around, previewing without a server.

That's a bold statement! :-)

Eclipse-based WYSIWYG editors just don't compare with Adobe tools for creative power, sophistication, usability, and design-time experience

Ian -- I personally look to Dreamweaver as the bar for WYSIWYG for us to hit... so hats off to Adobe as they continue to kick butt there. My stament about Workshop Studio is scoped to the eclipse ecosystem, as is our product. To respond to your point, the idea behind adding good WYSIWYG is to compliment our AppXRay technology. The philosphy behind both is to reduce the amount of develop-deploy-test-debug cycles that you have to spend on an application. AppXRay catches the errors as you type, and good WYSIWYG means having to deploy less often to see the resutls of a UI change. Hope that makes sense. Sincerely, Pieter

Be sure to take advantage of the 30 day trial period before sending in your money. The current version of BEA Workshop has a bug where it will not accept keyboard input depending on what version of the JVM you are running. With JDK 1.6 I can't do anything with BEA Workshop because it won't accept keyboard input. I'm not going to downgrade because of their bug. So be sure it will work for you with your JDK version before buying it. I bought BEA Workshop when they had it on special for $99 a couple of months ago and didn't get around to trying it out until now. I had no reason to think that it simply wouldn't work so I didn't try before buying. It's pathetic that they would release a tool with a complete show stopper like this. And to think that some people paid $899 for it. I have a thread open in the forums about this. They have a work around for JDK 1.4 and 1.5 which I haven't tried because they say this is a known issue only for those versions. Maybe it's worth a try, but my confidence in the tool is very low at this point.

The issue that you experienced with keyboard inputs and the latest jdk 1.4/1.5 is explained on the Dev2Dev forums with workaround instructions. http://forums.bea.com/bea/message.jspa?messageID=400003701&tstart=0 This issue has been fixed in internal builds of Workshop and will be available in the next release. With regards to jdk 1.6, the current plan is to officially certify against 1.6 once we adopt Eclipse 3.3 later this year.

I've already tried the work around, and it doesn't work with JDK 1.6. I've opened a trouble ticket so I'll find out if there is another work around or a patch. I haven't seen anything that says that BEA Workshop 3.3 doesn't work with JDK 1.6. There are places where it says that you have to have JDK 1.4 or better, but I've seen nothing that indicates that JDK 1.6 is incompatible. You should either get a patch or at least let people know ahead of time that Workshop 3.3 won't work with JDK 1.6.

Pieter called about me this problem (thanks, Pieter). I realize that BEA can't offer much in the way of support for a $99 product so I'm impressed by their response. Hopefully the support department has some way to make this work with JDK 1.6 and I won't have to wait until 10.1 comes out.

And they did. You start Eclipse with a supported JVM by adding the -vm argument (e.g. "-vm c:\jdk1.5.0_9\bin\javaw.exe") and then inside Eclipse set up your Java projects to use the JDK 1.6 compiler and runtime libraries. (I think Ant looks for JAVA_HOME from your environment.)

pfft.. why would one use BEA Workshop anyway?...well.. unless you've been suckered into buy the BEA Server. ha ha.

BEA Workshop Studio 3.3 provides development and debugging support for a wide variety of deployment platforms including: Weblogic Server (of course ;) ) Websphere Application Server Jboss Tomcat Resin Jetty John, if you develop your applications against multiple environments, like testing locally on Tomcat before pushing to Weblogic or Websphere, check out Studio. Also, if you are using a server that we don't currently support we would be interested in getting your feedback.

pfft.. why would one use BEA Workshop anyway?...well.. unless you've been suckered into buy the BEA Server. ha ha.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to clarify. Studio is designed from the group up to be server independent. Pretty much all the features (except for web folder mapping) work equally well on WebSphere, JBoss, Tomcat, Jetty, Resin. Features like web folder mapping are a way to say thanks to our weblogic customers.

It would be interesting to see how this fares with the low cost alternatives like MyEclipseIDE and the to be launched RedHatStudio (http://www.jboss.org/projects/rhdevstudio) Looking at the players behind the RedHatStudio - JBoss/Seam/Hibernate it would be worth following up. Besides the $800 off seems to be only for the first year. Users still might have to cough up $899 if they want to use it for the subsequent years. The only USP of this seems to be the AppXRay feature. Besides, other features are more or less inherent in most of the other IDEs in the market. And $899 for just this feature seems too much. At the moment, I would rather put my money on MyEclipseIDE and watch out for developments on the RedHatStudio. Regards, Mrinal

Mrinal, Honestly, we would welcome your feedback.Try it out and let us know what you think. See the our latest press release, we have a new version coming out in Summer, and would love some objective feedback on where we could do better. Bill Roth BEA broth at bea dot com

Besides the $800 off seems to be only for the first year. Users still might have to cough up $899 if they want to use it for the subsequent years.

The only USP of this seems to be the AppXRay feature.

Mrinal -- The pricing information you've posted is incorrect, we'd appreciate you not speculating on our pricing in the future in a public forum. Please refer to our website for more detailed pricing and subscription information, it's publicly available. Also, the year 1 license doesn't cost 899.00 right now, it's 99.00 as the thread states clearly at the top. But if you don't want the discount, you are welcome to pay the full price. Just so you realize: -It’s perpetual license that gives you unlimited upgrades and updates for the first year -If you choose to not renew your maintenance you still have the license forever but you don’t gain access to new upgrades - The maintenance/renewal cost is not $899 but 50% of list - Also, If you buy now it you get access to some major feature upgrades coming out during the summer.. which is a pretty darn good deal. As far as comparison to other products, being a software vendor, especially in the developer tools market that ostensibly exists to service folks like yourself, is a difficult experience that should command some respect from both other vendors and users alike. They have good products, but often with a different focus, price and quality level from Workshop Studio. We've plenty more USPs in Workshop Studio, so if you want to try using the products you mention, you'd quickly come to see the difference in value/price. If BEA Workshop Studio only had one unique selling point, I doubt we’d have beat every other Eclipse IDE in 2006 for the Best Commercial Eclipse based developer tool by a vote from community judges. I look forward to getting any informed feedback that you may have. Our forums are a good place to post that feedback.

But if you don't want the discount, you are welcome to pay the full price.

That did not sound very polite.

I purchased a copy of Workshop 3.3 several months ago. Will this also be eligible for the free upgrade to version 10?

I purchased a copy of Workshop 3.3 several months ago. Will this also be eligible for the free upgrade to version 10?

Absolutely! The term is one year. So as long as we release 10.1 before your year is up, you get it. If not, you can renew your subscription. I'm going to post some additional info on this topic. Pieter Humphrey, BEA Systems