| March 1998 Archived at Pineapplesoft |  | |||
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The Pineapplesoft Link newsletter covered a wide range of technical topics, see the archived issues. The newsletter was first emailed in 1998. In 2001 Benoît discontinued it in favour of professional writing for magazines. The “March 1998” page was archived in 2003 to preserve the original content of March 1998. | ||||
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Welcome to the third issue of Pineapplesoft Link. This month concentrates on a topic close to the heart of many organizations: rapid application development (RAD), specifically RAD in Java. If your organization, or you yourself, is considering a move to Java you should find this issue particularly relevant. Next month, I'll turn to a code-free introduction to CORBA. In May you will probably see an introduction to stylesheets for HTML, XML and SGML. I'd like to hear from you. Your opinions will help me improve the newsletter so please send your comments or suggestions to [address removed, the newsletter is no longer published thank you for your support] . Pineapplesoft Link, March 98: Rapid Application Development (RAD), as introduced by Visual Basic, PowerBuilder and Delphi, is popular with most organizations. RAD promises shorter time-to-market and lower cost of development, the dream of any software manager. Now that more organizations evaluate Java as a strategic development language, the need for RAD Java tools is growing. On RAD Tools My experience is that RAD tools can really help to deliver on schedule and on budget. On the other hand, for medium to large projects (i.e. real-life ones), they are never enough and certainly are no substitute for proper analysis and design. In fact, I classify RAD tools in two categories: (1) demonstration tools and (2) professional ones. Some RAD tools have been build with demonstrations in mind. I mean they give a big kick at the start of the project and leave you, short of breath, in the middle of prototyping. In short, they don't deliver the same RADiness over the duration of real projects. Of course, the initial kick looks real good during demonstrations - hence the name. Then there are the RAD tools that help climb the curve and support you throughout the project. This variety usually suffers from a slower start but, in the end, they help you win the race. Obviously when shopping for tools, one should be very concerned about what kind of RAD one is buying. Unfortunately it is difficult to know until well advanced in the project. By then it's always too late to change. When doing graphical development on Windows, my favorite RAD tools were Borland Delphi and C++ Builder. They really help with all the graphical and database aspects - always time consuming, repetitive tasks. And because they both build on first-class object-oriented languages and component models (also known as controls), they don't compromise on power or flexibility. Delphi is good for Windows development but what about Java? Symantec Visual Cafe was a first attempt at bringing the same cocktail of power and flexibility to Java. In my view, Visual Cafe felt short of that goal. Although it has some RADiness in the form of wizards and a very usable visual designer, it suffers from a number of idiosyncrasies. Also, it is dogmatic in handling source code - see below. Of course Visual Cafe, which has been available for more than a year, is one of the oldest Java development tools and consequently enjoys a leading share of the market. At the end of last year, Borland released its port of the Delphi technology to Java: JBuilder. More than one year in development, JBuilder has significantly influenced Java itself. In particular, Borland has been instrumental in the design of the now famous JavaBeans. Testing JBuilder I released the first issue of this newsletter shortly before installing JBuilder. The newsletter has proved more successful than I had anticipated. If I'm happy with it, it also causes some operational problems. I sent the first newsletter manually in roughly one hour but it quickly became apparent that I needed tools to cope with the growth. One options was to host the list with an ISP. Unfortunately I'm working on a budget as I don't want to charge for this newsletter. Another option was to buy a mailing list management (MLM) tool. There are some tools specifically designed to maintain mailing list over a dial-up connection, as I do. Unfortunately none of them met my expectations. Therefore I turned to the last option: to roll up my sleeves and to build my own solution. It also gave me a nice opportunity to test JBuilder on the field. This month newsletter is a short report of my experience. I installed JBuilder on old hardware (Pentium 133), but I was satisfied with the speed. Unfortunately, like many Java products, it is a memory ogre and the 48 Mb of RAM recommended by the editor may not be enough. Recently I reinstalled it on more modern hardware (Pentium II) and, boy, it sure flies! The interface is good but not always intuitive. I was never happy with the help panel for example. These problems pale when compared with the effectiveness of the visual designer and the quality of the component library. The visual designer is the most impressive tool. It works directly with Java source code. I could paint screens and it would generate the Java code. No programming required! What's more I could manually edit the generated code without breaking the visual designer. No other tool I know offers this level of flexibility. Visual Cafe, for example, also generates code automatically but it is not possible to manually edit it. In practice, Borland's approach is superior. I still have to see a medium or large project where the ability to manually edit the code has not saved days. In less than half a day of work, I had a functional mailing list manager. What's more I only had to program the small part that takes care of posting emails. Fortunately I could reuse code I had written for developer.com (published on December 25, 1997, "How to send an email from Java", http://www.developer.com/news/techworkshop/122597_email.html). I spent another half a day polishing bits and pieces and I had a crude but functional MLM utility. If that's not rapid development, I don't know what is! What's Next JBuilder is great for user interfaces and databases but it does not help with the non-graphical part or the business logic (posting emails in my case). As I have already said, RAD tools do not replace proper analysis and design. Very recently, I installed Together/J (http://www.oi.com/togetherj11.htm), a CASE tool for Java developed by Object International. Together/J concentrates on the design phase (for the technically inclined, it supports design with UML). I view both products as complementary. They both share the same philosophy of flawless integration with the Java source code. I'm planning to try that duo when I upgrade my MLM system probably this month. I'll be sure to keep you posted. Conclusion JBuilder brings Java to new heights. Thanks to Borland, one
no longer has to choose between real RAD and Java development
anymore. JBuilder delivers both. I hope Symantec and other
competitors will beef up their own offers. Self-promotion department I published two articles last month. On the first of February, Digital Cat published "Java
Decompilation and Reverse Engineering", the first part in a series
of two articles written with my colleague Marc Meurrens. Part 2 is
due in March. On February 9, Netscape View Source published "Electronic
Data Interchange on the Internet." Last month I mentioned XML/EDI,
the Netscape article goes in more detail over that technology. It
also discusses other forms of EDI over the Internet, including
Web-EDI and OBI. If you want to learn more on XML/EDI, I still recommend
participating in Documentation 98 in Paris where I'll give an
introduction on the topic. Please help us spread the word on Pineapplesoft Link: forward it to your friends, colleagues, etc. You can also vote for us as one of the best 500 Belgian Web site. Visit http://www.best.be/top500/bestsites.cfm and vote for http://www.pineapplesoft.com in the business category. You don't have to live in Belgium to vote for us. About Pineapplesoft Link Pineapplesoft Link is published freely, every month via
email. The focus is on distributed applications, Java, SGML,
handheld and Internet technologies. The articles target people
interested or concerned about technology either personally or
professionally. Editor: Benoît Marchal
Acknowledgements: thanks to Sean McLoughlin MBA for helping me with this issue. Back issues are available at http://www.psol.be/old/1/newsletter/. Although the editor and the publisher have used reasonable endeavors to ensure accuracy of the contents, they assume no responsibility for any error or omission that may appear in the document. Last update: March 1998. |