JBuilder Makes Java a Piece of Cake

Java comes of age with a full-featured development environment from Borland.

Peter Wayner

When Java burst onto the scene in 1995, Sun offered it to the world with Stone Age Unix tools. It was only a matter of time before top-grade Java tools made it to market: Microsoft responded with J++, which integrated Java with ActiveX. This summer Borland introduced JBuilder, a highly integrated Java environment that produces pure Java and JavaBeans.

The news is good for programmers. Java's structure makes it much cleaner than C++ and gives developers plenty of room to exploit that structure and automate much of their production.

The automation is obvious from the beginning. When you open a new file, you don't just get a text window waiting for code: JBuilder presents a dialog box so that you can create a new Applet, Application, JavaBean, Class, Component, or a host of other items. JBuilder produces a skeleton for the code when you fill in dialog boxes with object parameters. It's possible to thread together the bulk of an application using built-in tools, coding only the program logic itself.

JBuilder builds properly structured JavaBeans, persistent objects that you can customize and that are easy to manipulate and build into GUIs. A wizard constructs the basic shell structure of a JavaBean for you. The parameters and details are bound up with the code and are dynamic, unlike in traditional development environments, where code is static and doesn't change once it's compiled.

The most attractive part of JBuilder may be its database integration: It comes with some standard Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) components to integrate with databases, although to use JBuilder for heavy database work you need JBuilder Professional, which comes with a set of tools, called DataExpress, that simplifies SQL database access. Most professionals will want the Professional version, which adds extra wizards, live graphing components, and a range of database tools.

Borland knows what programmers want, and JBuilder offers most of that, although a Client/Server version with tools for developing enterprise-wide products is still in the works. JBuilder's broad range may represent a turning point for Java. A year ago, people struggled to make items dance across a Web page; today, coding stand-alone applications is as convenient in Java as it is in C++. Many programmers are already switching from C++ to Java for the built-in memory management and Java's write-once, run-anywhere philosophy. JBuilder makes the switch all the more attractive.

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Where to Find

JBuilder..............................$299.95 Professional


......................................$ 99.95 Standard

Borland International, Inc.
Scotts Valley, CA
Phone:    800-233-2444
Phone:    408-431-1000
Internet: 
http://www.borland.com/jbuilder/

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Put on a JBuilder Face

screen_link (30 Kbytes)

The JBuilder interface combines a component toolbar, hierarchical trees for project files and class methods, and a code-editor window.

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Peter Wayner is a BYTE consulting editor based in Bal timore. His home page is at http://www.access.digex.net/~pcw/pcwpage.html .