[Lance Drake]

One never knows where to place these postings – and gosh knows I always end up feeling chagrined after whining or complaining – but here goes…

Using MyEclipse (4.1.1) with Eclipse (3.1.2) and simply asking the system to create for me a deployable EJB bean is not something that happens.

I name the bean ‘MyBean’ in the ‘New->EntityBean’ create dialog – hit the ‘MyEclipse->Run XDoclet’ trigger and finish that process with no errors.

I do not change a single line in any file.

THEN… I hit the ‘Deploy’ button – send it off to JBoss – and that when the litany of errors begins. So, I attend to the errors – (Why are there errors? – this supposed to be a MyEclipse-party) the last of which defies explanation or remedy:

Bean   : MyBean
Method : public String ejbCreate() throws CreateException
Section: 10.6.4
Warning: The return type of an ejbCreate(...) method must be the entity bean's primary key type.

Yes – I know… “The XDoclet metadata needs to be changed…” Why? This is the out-of-the-box-MyEclipse-party we’re attending where you can’t create a frickin empty EntiityBean without a charter membership to the XDoclet Developer’s Hall of Fame.

Oh… did I forget to mention that – after I have fixed all of the things that the JBoss EJB verfication complains about – if I EVER run XDoclet again, all of my previous fixes/changes are obliterated and the files are regenerated back to their original bogus condition? ACCK!

It appears the solution is for me to go out and get yet another large brown robe so as to be able to join the ‘Church of The Gooey Death, Discount House of Worship, and Altar of MyEclipse/XDoclet Weenies”.

This thing is supposed to be a tool to ACCELERATE the development process. Instead it’s just another religious sojourn of 1000 Miles – to be taken one step at a time. Yes.. I KNOW… once I see the light, it will all be so beautiful. Once I grok the dogma, I’ll forever be a member of the secret-inside-club-of-the-coolguys who write entire apps in only three lines of code. Meanwhile 100% of my time is consumed dealing with tool-issues and 0% actual work is being accomplished,

Can you tell I’m frustrated? (HEY!… they did mention RANT in the invocation to this forum – so are you surprised?) Feh cryin’ out loud!… this is baby-step #1 – and now I wonder what’s lurking in the sketchy documentation that will stop me dead in my tracks should I try to do something even mildly complicated?

Tell ya what… the documentation for the MyEclipse/XDoclet connection is non-existent. I am not even sure what to do if they come out with a NEW version of XDoclet; like wouldn’t it be cool if there was a description for how you uninstall the existing version and then where to stuff the new one?

I can hear it now… “Dude – You’ve got XDoclet problems – this is the MyEclipse forum – go complain where somebody might actually care.” Well – as long as XDoclet comes as part of the MyEclipse strategy, the MyEclipse team has XDoclet blood – if not plasma – on their hands.

’nuff said – I paid for my ‘PRO’ subscription. Mebbe it’ll help make things better NEXT year. If you saw the movie “Bedazzled” – the ORIGINAL version with Dudley Moore and Peter Cooke – imagine in your mind’s eye that I am the Dudley Moore character standing there in yet another version of hell delivering my most emphatic’ raspberry’ as the signal to the devil that I want to let go of this wish and try again with something else.

[Scott Anderson]

Lance,

First of all, you’re not off-topic here. Second, this is what I’d qualify as “good rant”; it’s talks about usage issues, it’s written in a funny and engaging manner we can all relate to, and it isn’t mean-spirited or hateful.

So, now to your points. Unfortunately, simply leaving everything in its default configuration and running XDoclet won’t result in a working configuration, as you found out. The reasons for this are numerous but revolve around support for 3 different EJB spec levels and 20+ different servers. The cross product of these numbers gives you the flex points we have to support. So, although it may seem straightforward to use, for example, “EJB 2.0 and JBoss 4”, if we defaulted all the configurations to work there, then the generation wouldn’t work anywhere else. OK, that’s the problem statement so you can at least understand “why it is what it is”. Actuall, the fact that this quagmire exists at all is why XDoclet exists. In a perfect world, we would never need a tool to generate a bunch of code like this. But here we are thanks to a series of poor specifications.

So, how can we make this easy, or at least better, and solve your problem? First, we did write a quickstart tutorial called EJB Development that explains how to use XDoclet within MyEclipse to create EJBs and how to get it configured for your particular development needs quickly. If you didn’t find it in the MyEclipse help in the application itself, it’s part of the documentation section on the website as well. BTW, this section contains lots of short tutorials that attempt to help you get the most out of MyEclipse quickly. Once you’ve read gone through them, we’d appreciate your feedback on how we can improve the information or answer any additional questions you might have.

[Lance Drake]

Hi MyEclipse Folks,

OK – I’ve calmed down. Having gotten past many of the problems (all due to self-imposed gunshots to the feet) and gaining an ever-better grok of the whole MyEclipse/XDoclet world, things are going much better.

Thanks for not booting me out of this otherwise very nice haven of smart, kind people.

Best Wishes

[Author]

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