More and more leading corporations are creating multi-tier, distributed applications to meet the scalability and reliability requirements of business critical applications. And the technologies that they are turning to more and more are CORBA and Java.

By using CORBA for distributed application development, corporations gain the benefits of platform and language independence. A CORBA infrastructure integrates Java solutions into an existing corporate infrastructure.

Integrated Solution

JBuilder 3 builds on the CORBA features delivered in JBuilder 2 to provide the most productive environment for creating distributed applications. JBuilder 3 includes the following components key to deliver distributed applications:

• VisiBroker for Java 3.4 (with Java 2 support)- the latest version of the industry leading CORBA ORB for creating platform and language independent distributed applications.
• VisiBroker 3.4 Naming Service - reduces the complexity of locating and retrieving objects by providing a mechanism to associate meaningful names to individual object implementations.
• VisiBroker 3.4 Event Service - de-coupling of traditional "clients" and "servers", and transforms applications into information "suppliers" and information "consumers". This supplier-consumer model reduces server traffic and improves scalability without impacting development efforts.
• Visual Development Tools for rapidly creating distributed applications.
• Remote Debugger for debugging distributed applications.
• ORB Explorer for simplifying the management of CORBA services.

CORBA Integration

With JBuilder 3, developing distributed applications is an integrated part of the development process within the award winning JBuilder IDE. In addition to the project manager integration delivered in JBuilder 2, JBuilder 3 adds the following features to simplify the development of multi-tier CORBA applications.

• Project Manager integration for both VisiBroker and OrbixWeb™.
• Greater control of options and parameters passed to the JAVA2IDL compiler.
• Syntax highlighting and structure pane navigation of IDL files.
• Visual tools to specify settings used to connect to an instance of an ORB.
• Ability to easily import CORBA interfaces into an Interface Repository.

Figure 13: Syntax highlighting and structure pane navigation of IDL files

Data Modeler

The Data Modeler provides the same capabilities for distributed applications that it does for two-tier database applications: visually defining multiple SQL queries and the relationships between those queries. The difference for distributed application development is that the Data Modeler stores information in a standard IDL file, defining queries as a sequence of structures for use in standard CORBA environments.

Used in conjunction with the Application Generator, the Data Modeler makes it easy to create distributed database applications with JDBC connectivity to corporate data.

Application Generator

The Application Generator is used to automatically create multi-tier CORBA applications. Rapidly create or update one or more of the components that make up a distributed CORBA application: Java clients, Java servers, and/or HTML clients using Servlets.

Figure 14: Generate distributed CORBA applications with the Application Generator

By working with existing Interface Definition Language (IDL) files or interfaces defined in an Interface Repository (IR), the Application Generator can be used with existing projects. Or, create new CORBA interfaces using the DataModeler to rapidly create multi-tier database applications.

For those new to CORBA development, interfaces can be defined in Java using VisiBroker's Caffeine technology û no need to learn IDL.

ORB Explorer

The ORB Explorer presents a graphical view of VisiBroker naming services and interface repositories from within JBuilder, simplifying the management of CORBA services. It also includes other facilities for working with IDL files, such as the import of interfaces into a shared repository and exporting of repository information to an IDL file.

Figure 15: Using the ORB Explorer to manage CORBA services

Key benefits of the ORB Explorer include:

• Creating, editing, and deleting naming contexts and name bindings.
• Importing interfaces defined in an IDL file into the Interface Repository, saving interfaces in the repository to an IDL file, and deleting existing modules in the Interface Repository.
• Viewing existing instances of CORBA objects in the Location Service.

Remote Debugging

JBuilder 3 provides the features developers require for debugging distributed applications. Using the new distributed debugger in JBuilder 3, developers can:

• Simultaneously debug the multiple processes involved in a distributed application.
• Remotely debug the various components of a distributed application from one machine
• Remotely debug applications on multiple platforms, including Windows™ and Solaris™.

Java Servlet Development

JBuilder developers can now easily create server-side Java applications for delivering dynamic web content using the Servlet Wizard. Servlets can be thought of as server-side versions of applets that extend the functionality of web servers in the same way that CGI scripts do. However, Servlets offer a substantial performance improvements over CGI and are truly portable across platforms. JBuilder 3 adds a number of enhancements to servlet development over the Servlet Wizard that was included with JBuilder 2, including:

• Creating HTML front ends to CORBA servers using the Application Generator.
• Creating HTML front ends to corporate data using the Application Generator.
• Automatically creating a Servlet Server for running and debugging servlets from within the JBuilder IDE.

Figure 16: The new Servlet Server makes it easy to debug servlets from within the JBuilder IDE

Enterprise JavaBean Development (EJB)

The Enterprise JavaBean architecture allows business logic to be encapsulated as a set of objects with standardized interfaces, making it easier to build distributed business applications using Java.

Figure 17: Automatically create home & remote interfaces for business logic

JBuilder 3 allows developers to create EJB components with the enterprise features of BeansExpress, EJBExpress. EJBExpress simplifies the creation of both Session and Entity Enterprise JavaBeans, automates essential tasks such as the creation of the Home and Remote interfaces, and simplifies creation of deployable JAR files using by using the Deployment Wizard.

Summary

JBuilder 3 continues to deliver the most comprehensive set of tools for creating pure Java applications, applets, servlets, JavaBeans, and Enterprise JavaBeans. First and foremost, JBuilder is a visual Java development tool built by Java developers, for Java developers. Since JBuilder is developed using JBuilder itself (80% of the product is written in Java) - what borland.comÆs R&D team learns developing JBuilder is used to make JBuilder even more productive.

Key features include:

• Platform independence with industry standard pure Java code generation.
• NEW! Enhanced Java 2 development environment, with Java 2 hosted designers, JDK Switching for compiling & debugging using multiple JDKs, included Open Tools API, and 300+ JavaBean components, with source, for creating Java applications, applets, servlets, Enterprise JavaBeans, and distributed CORBA applications.
• NEW! Visual development using the Java 2 JFC/Swing components - JBuilder 3 is the first professional Java IDE to support visual development with the new Java 2 JFC/Swing components, including support for the Swing data models.
• NEW! Java 2 and multi-JDK debugging, (including JDK 1.1.7) provides the debugging flexibility needed by professional Java developers.
• NEW! Remote debugging, with multi-process and multi-platform debugging, for debugging of complex distributed applications.
• NEW! Enhanced visual development tools, including the Package Migration Wizard, Deployment Wizard, pure Java Help System with full text search, and Javadoc Wizard.
• NEW! Visual database development tools, including the Application Generator, Data Modeler, pure Java SQL Builder, and pure Java JDBC Explorer to rapidly create database applications for the Java 2 platform.
• NEW! Enhanced database components with source code for creating professional database applications, including the DataExpress data-access components and enhanced dbSwing data aware components (with industry standard JDBC connectivity.)
• NEW! JDataStore pure Java embeddable database for creating small footprint, portable database applications.
• NEW! Visual servlet development û use the Application Generator to create data-aware HTML pages or HTML front ends to CORBA servers.
• NEW! Visual tools for CORBA development û only JBuilder includes the Application Generator, Data Modeler, ORB Explorer, IDL Syntax Highlighting, and IDL structure pane navigation for productive development of distributed, platform & language independent applications.
• NEW! Integrated CORBA development using either VisiBroker or OrbixWeb™.
• NEW! VisiBroker 3.4 for Java CORBA ORB, Naming, and Event services are included to provide the tools needed for developing distributed, platform & language independent applications for the Java 2 platform.
• NEW! EJBExpress for rapid Enterprise JavaBean development, simplifying the creation of both Session and Entity Enterprise JavaBeans.

In conclusion, JBuilder 3 delivers a unique combination of features that set it apart from the competition as the tool of choice for creating platform-independent business & database applications, distributed Enterprise applications, and JavaBean components, on time and on budget.

Return to Part II

Distributed Application Development

Return to Part I

Rapid Development of Java 2 Applications

Return to Introduction

What's New in JBuilder 3