CodeGear announced the availability of JBuilder 2008, its latest version of the IDE for the Java platform based on the Eclipse open source framework.

With JBuilder 2008, CodeGear has added an innovation: a methodology and associated collection of tools known as Application Factories. Application Factories is a new approach to software development and code reuse, says CodeGear, that addresses one of the challenges faced by Java developers today: navigating the complexity of framework choices, open source, internal code, and deregulated technology standards trying to determine how to use and reuse them together in order to deliver high-quality solutions with ever-increasing time pressures.

Application Factories fosters reusable developer intelligence that can make developers more productive and speed projects, especially among fluid, globally distributed teams. It enables senior developers to communicate intent, capture instructions and recommendations, and point to resources – all in a single, simple tool. Said simply, Application Factories transforms what was once a generic IDE into an application-specific IDE.

Application-centric IDE Captures Developer Knowledge and Intent

In JBuilder 2008's Application Factories, reusable code is delivered in the form of modules, which both contain code and capture knowledge about their purpose and design. Developers can choose from a collection of modules which are stored in a metadata repository to create their applications, or if necessary create their own application modules which they can store in the same repository for later reuse.

“Application Factories radically reduces the amount of time it takes to bring our new developers up to speed,” said Doychin Bondzhev, owner, dSoft-Bulgaria Ltd. “Having the complete knowledge of the project evolution along with the source code, all maintained within the IDE, allows our developers to concentrate on real problems without having to worry about non-essential issues. Application Factories integrates seamlessly with our EJB-based middle tier running on JBoss, and our in-house Swing application development framework, and ultimately has given us a way to create a higher starting point and better standard practices for every new project we develop.”

Said Matt Raible, founder and lead developer of AppFuse, an open source project that helps developers create web applications quickly with popular open source tools: “A common goal of both AppFuse and Application Factories is to reduce the inevitable ramp-up time due to the complexity and number of frameworks typically involved in building new Web applications. Application Factories takes a significant step forward in addressing this issue. It enables developers to take an application-centric approach to development and work in an IDE that is application-aware while continuing to leverage the flexibility and benefits of AppFuse as the underlying project skeleton.”

JBuilder 2008 is also a commercial IDE for Java that includes Instantiations Swing Designer as an integrated feature of the product. Swing Designer, a user interface designer on Eclipse Plugin Central, is a visual layout tool that helps developers to construct Swing-based graphical user interfaces. Swing Designer includes bi-directional code generation, round-trip editing capabilities, and comprehensive support for Swing layouts, controls and containers, giving developers complete control over how they develop their code.

Other key JBuilder 2008 capabilities include:

• Updated support for leading commercial and open source Java application servers
• Collaboration and team development with TeamInsight and ProjectAssist
• Code coverage, memory and CPU profiling
• Thread debugging and request analyzer
• UML modeling and code archeology
• Code metrics and audits

“The loud and clear message coming from Java development organizations today is ‘help us to simplify,’” said Michael Swindell, CodeGear Vice President of Products. “From open source to lightweight frameworks, the positive changes in the Java ecosystem have also significantly increased complexity. JBuilder 2008 is an innovative and game-changing release that is designed to tame today’s Java development complexity, facilitate reusability, and increase quality and performance.”

JBuilder 2008 is built on the latest version of Eclipse – Eclipse 3.3 (Europa) and Eclipse Web Tools Platform 2.0, and offers enhanced developer support for the Java Platform Enterprise Edition 5 (Java EE 5) and Java Development Kit (JDK) 5.

JBuilder 2008 is supported on Microsoft Windows XP (SP2), Microsoft Windows Vista, Mac OS X (10.4/Tiger) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.