News

Oracle Refreshes Developer Toolset

• By Scott Bekker
• 08/08/2001

Oracle describes the toolset as a team development environment for building J2EE and XML applications and Web services.

With the upgrade to JDeveloper version 3.2, which is less than a year old, Oracle is aiming at providing developers with an easier way to develop J2EE applications.

"The developer can really define the components they want and the interactions they want without staring at a blank sheet of code," says John Magee, senior director of Oracle 9i marketing.

Magee acknowledges that the approach is similar to the environment Microsoft uses with Visual Studio.

"I think Microsoft's goal is to do that for their proprietary platform," Magee says. "Oracle is the only one to step up and do that for the J2EE world."

Oracle's approach is to add wizards and property editors through what it calls the Business Components for Java Framework, which amounts to a set of J2EE best practices. Oracle also added a code coach that pipes in while code is being written.

Analyst Kathy Quirk of Hurwitz Group says Oracle 9i JDeveloper is a significant release for the Redwood Shores, Calif., database vendor as its developers require well integrated development environments.

"Oracle is trying to provide a solid development environment for use with their application server, which is pretty much what all vendors in the space are trying to do," Quirk says.

Oracle's recent decision to license the Orion Application Server technology from a Swedish company for use in the Oracle9i Application Server gives Oracle strong application server technology to compete with BEA and IBM, she says.

Oracle9i JDeveloper can be used with other application servers and with databases other than the Oracle9i Database. A final version will be released before the end of the year, Magee says.

The JDeveloper product, a combination of Java and C code, was previously only available on Windows NT. The 9i version is written entirely in Java and is available on the major Unix platforms and Linux in addition to Windows.