Symantec Pours Java into Its Development Environment

Rick Grehan

From the outside, Symantec Cafe (called Espresso in its formative stages) appears indistinguishable from the company's C++ 7.2 IDDE (integrated development and debugging environment). However, once you get inside the IDDE, you find that Symantec Cafe is a Java development system.

In what resembles an organ implant, Symantec has inserted a Java compiler into its development system. It has also added a Java browser and "Java-aware" editor (i.e., Java source code is displayed in different colors, depending on the synta x and the keyword). Because Symantec is using the same IDDE it used in C++ 7.2, Cafe acquires piles of features for free.

For example, the IDDE's cl ass editor and hierarchy editor function within Cafe just as they do within C++ 7.2. The former is a three-pane Smalltalk-like browser/editor that lets you rapidly navigate through Java classes and class members, such as functions and variables, down to the source code. The latter is a graphical viewer/editor into the inheritance hierarchy of a Java application's classes. It bears the distinction of "editor" because you can, by grabbing and dragging the connections between displayed classes, alter the inheritance relationship between a subclass and its parent class. Such alterations are automatically reflected in the source code.

Symantec Cafe also comes with its own Express helpers, the Symantec equivalent to wizards. AppExpress guides you through the creation of Java skeleton source code for bootstrapping your Java project--be it a console (i.e., command line) or Single Document Interface (SDI) application or a Java applet. For example, if you step through the AppExpress-led bui ld of a Java SDI project and enter nothing more than the name of the application, Cafe will pour out enough code to build a working window with an operative file/edit/help menu.

The weak link in the package is the debugger. Cafe includes Sun's Java debugger, which, compared to debuggers such as Symantec's own within C++ 7.2, is a step back in time. The debugger is command-line-oriented, amounting to a text window into which you type your commands. In a sense it's a remote debugger, since it controls the Java application under test via TCP/IP (which you must install to run the debugger). You can suspend and resume threads, peek into source code, examine an individual thread's stack and local memory, and more. Still, I hope Symantec works on a visual debugger for the package.

At the time of this writing, Cafe was available in demo form from Symantec's Web page at http://www.symantec.com ; you can also get more information by calling (800) 441-7234 or (541) 334-6054. It's actually a patch to the Symantec C++ 7.2 compiler, so you'll need that before you can use Cafe. Although Symantec plans to provide Cafe separately, the company did not yet have pricing information available.

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Have Java at the Symantec Cafe

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Users who've found other Java development environments a little too Spartan should investigate Symantec Cafe, which wraps the company's C++ 7.2 IDDE around a Java compiler.