[adcworks]

Hi,

Up until yesterday my development env. consisted of Eclipse (java only), Dreamweaver MX (jsp, xml files like hibernate config, struts), VSS (had to be open to checkout anything none-java since Eclipse VSS plugin was handling java), Ant to deploy and build, BugZilla website for defect tracking.

We are embarking on a new J2EE web project that will consist of 6 team members shortly, and I was downloading all the latest versions of the IDE and plugins getting ready to setup the environment we will all use. I stumbled on MyEclipse and read the feature list and saw it had so much of what we do built-in, and so I decided to try it out. I got myself a licence and rapidly was able to build a base Struts project for the new application, but importantly was able to configure it to map to our existing large intranet web project all in a matter of hours.

I have been using MyEclipse since yesterday morning to be honest. I have been able to shutdown VSS totally since ME builds in all these editors for JSP 2.0, HTML and CSS etc. The image browser is quite handy and the web browser real handy. I have enabled Struts, Hibernate capabilities and searched our BugZilla database from ME search. I don’t need DMX anymore, no IE windows for BZ and so on.

I like the integration with Tomcat although as you may have seen from other posts today I do need multiple Tomcats per project that may or may not be on different network machines, but your reply said you were working on this.

I am really impressed. My machine runs a lot faster because of reduced number of apps running. I’ve just last night discovered the break points in JSPs which is cool, and I can see that I will probably continue to be impressed.

I have read the roadmap and am looking forward to the UML support which means we can do away with Jude, and the visual Hibernate designer sounds very useful indeed, since almost ALL our applications are now using Hibernate and will continue to do so. I noticed only Hibernate 2 is supported in ME currently, but I am sure that will change to H3 in a later release? Are you also planning on building in a HQL tester, so a developer can test a HQL statement out on a database – that would be incredibly useful and would save coding the HQL, compiling it and then running the application itself.

Yes, loving MyEclipse, it’s streamlining development already for me and I’ve recommended 6 licences for the team based on what it does now and what is coming later this year.

Incidentally how up to date is the roadmap page? One of your support team mentioned a version 5 is coming late August but the roadmap quotes 4.1 beta. It would be really handy to have an accurate roadmap page just so we can keep an eye on what to expect realistically. Maybe it is already though, just checking 🙂

And your support forum is also commendable. I’ve used a fair few and often they are quite slow or unfriendly. Yours are fast and polite.

All the best, ADC.

[Riyad Kalla]

ADC we appreciate the kind words, these really help boost spirits in crunch times like now.

Let me try and hit all your points very quickly:
1) Multiple app server setups and better overall app server configuration/integration is comming in MyEclipse 5.0 (totally new flexible project structures/etc)
2) Hibernate 3 support will be looked into after 4.0 ships (I can’t bring this up right now or the hibernate developers will drop dead on me 🙂
3) HQL tester, we have a few plugins in mind for this, agreed that it would be fantastically helpful, many of us use Hibernate as well.
4) Roadmap needs to be updated, it will get a big kick after 4.0 ships but until we know what “made it into” 4.0 we can’t update it. We really just need to ask for user patience at this point and focus entirely on this next release, once that’s out we can atleast resume a semblance of normality until 5.0 gets closer (late August timeframe, that is merely an estimate).

I hope this information helps! One of the reasons things like roadmaps and such are so vague is because we are completely driven by user demand and we don’t know what will be cut from a release or what will make it. FOr example, we had no itention of doing a M6-compatible build of MyEclipse 3.8.4, but so many people asked for it, that we stopped for about a week and ported MyEclipse and tested it and released it, now we are back on 4.0 development.

So any number of those little kinds of things can popup which cause us to adjust our flight plan on the fly.

[Ivar Vasara]

just a note regarding project structure.. the vss plugin is pretty cool (if you’re stuck with vss) and can handle all the files in your Eclipse project. Eclipse lets you associate other files with external programs, so you could have dropped the VSS client and used eclipse to manage all your files.

[bradm]

Let me second ADC’s kudos: I have been a user for two years now and I never cease to be amazed at MyEclipse! I really don’t know what I’d do without it. Spectacular job and support.

[Riyad Kalla]

Brad we really appreciate the props, I’ll send this to the team.

[Author]

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