MyEclipse Blue Edition for RAD Users

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

This document outlines some of the key similarities and differences between MyEclipse Blue Edition and IBM Rational Application Developer® (RAD) in an attempt to help familiarize IBM RAD developers with MyEclipse Blue.

The MyEclipse Blue and RAD IDEs share many common concepts, tools and facilities such as Perspectives, Views, Preferences, etc. Additionally there are a number of important differences between the two IDEs such as default workbench layout, tool names and functional scope representation. We will try and clarify the most fundamental differences to help make MyEclipse Blue a comfortable fit for you.

2. System Requirements

This tutorial was created with MyEclipse Blue Edition 6.1. If you are using another version of MyEclipse Blue Edition (possibly newer), most of these screens and instructions should still be very similar.

If you are using a newer version of MyEclipse and notice that portions of this tutorial appear different from the screens you are seeing, please let us know and we will make sure to resolve any inconsistencies.

3. Exploring the MyEclipse Workbench

MyEclipse Blue Edition and IBM RAD are both built on top of the Eclipse platform. Because of this the interfaces, layout, concepts and naming of a lot of the UI elements in both IDEs are either the same or look very similar. This section of the document will review the most general areas of the IDE such as the default perspective layout, the available perspectives, project creation and getting help.

3.1 The Welcome Screen

The first time you launch MyEclipse Blue and create a new workspace, you will be greeted with the Welcome screen. From the Welcome screen you can jump to a collection of overview information about the product, tutorials, samples and more:

3.2 Perspectives

After closing the Welcome screen you will be in the default MyEclipse Java Enterprise Perspective:

The layout of this perspective is somewhat similar to the RAD J2EE Perspective. Your Package Explorer on the left is your main mode for navigating and working with project resources. You also have available the Problems, Tasks, Servers, Console and other views you are used to using in RAD.

In addition to the default MyEclipse Java Enterprise Perspective in MyEclipse Blue, there are a slew of other perspectives available to you for working with additional technologies like persistence technologies, databases, Swing GUI Design, enterprise reports and more:

While you are certainly free to open any of the perspectives yourself and work with them, any time you work with a resource that is related to that perspective (like design a Swing GUI), MyEclipse Blue will automatically switch you over to the appropriate perspective.

3.3 Project Types

In addition to working with perspectives, working with projects in MyEclipse Blue is very similar to RAD as well. You can create a new MyEclipse project from the toolbar shortcut button:

You can also open the New Project Dialog from the File > New menu as well to get a listing of all the supported project types:

3.4 Preferences

Adjusting Preferences for MyEclipse Blue is also similar to working with RAD; you can find all the preferences for MyEclipse Blue under Window > Preferences > MyEclipse Blue Editor:

You can also jump to the MyEclipse Blue preferences directly from the MyEclipse > Preferences menu item:

3.5 Tutorials & Example Projects

Now that you are a bit more familiar with MyEclipse Blue, for developers that want to learn how to use the MyEclipse tools a good place to start is the tutorials section from the Welcome screen. Each of the tutorials walks you through the step-by-step process of creating a new project and working with a specific technology or technique in that project. You can also find all of the tutorials listed under the Help Contents.

For developers that like to dive head-first into a new technology, we would encourage you to utilize the Examples On-Demand repository:

The repository contains many projects that can be installed directly into your workbench with a single click then run by following the instructions provided with the project (usually in the README.txt file).

3.6 Getting Help

Last but not least to access all of the tutorials, guides and help documentation that ships with MyEclipse Blue Edition at any time, you can open the Help > Help Contents menu and browse through the help table of contents:

4. Working with Projects

As we saw above in Section 3, MyEclipse Blue Edition supports quite a few project types out of the box:

Coming from IBM RAD you may be wondering where certain project types went, if those technologies are still supported in MyEclipse Blue and if they are, how to continue working with them.

As a quick reference for new users, we provide the following matrix that gives you a good idea of how your old IBM RAD project types map to projects or functionality in MyEclipse Blue:

NOTE: When the same project is used in both IBM RAD and MyEclipse Blue, it will be indicated as "(Same)"

NOTE: Some project types carry the same name across the two IDEs, but they are in fact different project types.

You'll notice that for the mass majority of projects that you are used to working with in IBM RAD, the same project type is supported in MyEclipse Blue or a similar project type is supported.

NOTE: For the 3 missing project types above (Application Client Project, Connector Project and Portlet Projects) the MyEclipse Blue team is looking at adding support for these project types in the near future.

For the most commonly used project types, Web Projects, in MyEclipse Blue there is no distinction between a Static or Dynamic Web Project, there is merely a Web Project that once created has a very standard "exploded WAR" layout to it by default:

The other common project type that you will be working with in MyEclipse Blue is the Enterprise Application Project. Enterprise Application Projects in both IBM RAD and MyEclipse Blue act in a similar fashion in that they are assigned modules (other projects) to belong to them but don't contain project contents like source files themselves:

You can easily modify the modules (or projects) that belong to an Enterprise Application Project including any number of EJB, Web or Java Projects that will belong and be deployed with the Enterprise Application Project (EAR).

5. Deploying Projects

In IBM RAD you deploy a project to an application server to run and debug it using the Publish feature. In MyEclipse Blue the Publish step is referred to as Deployment and in order to run or debug your project, you must first select an application server you have configured in MyEclipse Blue to deploy your project to, then run the application server.

Deploying a project can be done from a few different locations, from the Toolbar:

from the Project Right-Click Context Menu:

or from the Servers View:

Each of those locations will bring up the Add / Remove Deployment Dialog, from there you can setup any number of deployments for a project to any number of servers you wish:

This is different from IBM RAD in that your project isn't tied to the Runtime you configure for your project. You are completely free to have a single Web Project deployed to WebSphere, Tomcat, JBoss and Glassfish all at the same time and MyEclipse Blue will keep all of those deployments in sync for you.

Deployments for Web, EJB, EAR, etc. Projects are all handled in the same way, from the same dialog.

In addition to creating deployments to different servers for each project, you can also control what kind of deployment they are, more specifically:

• Exploded Deployment (Development Mode): The project is copied out to the application server and as changes in the IDE are made and saved, MyEclipse Blue will synchronize those changes to the application server immediately.
• Packaged Deployment (Production Mode): MyEclipse Blue will create a deployable archive (WAR, EAR, etc.) in the application server's deployment directory which will then be deployed by the app server. Changes in the IDE are not synchronized immediately and require the developer to manually Redeploy to update the deployment on the server.

We encourage developers working on actively changing projects to stick to an Exploded Deployment to make deploying and testing changes as they work faster and easier, but you are certainly free to work with whatever kind of deployment you prefer.

6. Running & Debugging Projects

Before jumping to this section be sure you have covered Section 5 and understand how deployments are handled in MyEclipse Blue. Once your project is deployed to your application server, you need to make sure the application server is running and hosting your project (web or enterprise application) so you can connect to it and run it.

You can manage your configured application servers from the Toolbar:

or from the Servers View:

both of these controls will give you the ability to Start, Stop and Restart the application server of your choosing. Any server run from MyEclipse Blue will show it's output directly in the Console View:

From the Console View you can monitor all output from the server (error, logging, etc.) and from your own projects deployed to it.

Once your project has been deployed to an application server and that application server is running (in Debug mode) you can place breakpoints directly in your project source files and then exercising that application so that those breakpoints will be activated (hit). This debugging process should feel somewhat familiar to IBM RAD users as the fundamental mechanics of setting and hitting breakpoints will be similar.

As an example, in the following shot we are using the MyBlogStrutsHibernateExample project from the Examples On-Demand repository:

You can see in the browser in the top center running our application, in this case, about to post a new blog message. You can see below it, the PostDAO class is open. Also note the text that mentions our PostDAO.save method is the one called when we click the Submit button to post a new blog message.

Assuming we wanted to debug this save operation, we set a breakpoint in the editor directly by double-clicking in the left hand margin; you can see the breakpoint marker looks like a little ball with a checkmark on top of it. Once we click the Submit button in the browser, MyEclipse Blue will execute up to the line where we set the breakpoint, then pause execution of our application and flip us over to the Debug Perspective to dig into any and all runtime state of our application that we want to inspect:

In the screen above you see that we hit the breakpoint we set. You can also see that we are also inspecting the value of transientInstance and it's Title and Content values match exactly what we typed into the form.

These are a few examples of how debugging works in MyEclipse Blue. You could certainly set more breakpoints, conditional breakpoints, watch expressions and more, but at least now you know how to get started with it.

7. Capabilities vs Facets

In both MyEclipse Blue and IBM RAD, the ability to work with additional technologies on a given project (Java Project, Web Project, etc.) is handled by adding additional configuration information and possibly libraries to a project at which point specialized tools become available to work with that new technology.

In IBM RAD this is done by adding "Facets" to a project; in MyEclipse Blue this is done by adding Capabilities to a project.

Capabilities are project and context-sensitive, meaning, not every Capability can be added to every project. Some are intended only for Web Projects, others will work on any project. Additionally some Capabilities cannot be added to a project after other capabilities have already been added, but this will all be communicated to you by way of those particular capabilities being disabled from the Capabilities Menu:

When adding most Capabilities, you will be prompted for additional metadata required to configure and install that feature for the given project. For example, adding JavaServer Faces or Struts capabilities will require that you let MyEclipse Blue know where critical files for the particular framework reside in your project so it can provide additional tooling for them:

Once those capabilities are enabled, you can make use of the specialized tools that MyEclipse Blue provides to work with them, examples would be tools such as the Visual Report Designer, Visual JSF Page Designer, Struts Flow Designer and many more specialized tools that are available in MyEclipse Blue for your enterprise development:

8. Other Hot Features...

While we have covered all the basics that you will need to know how to get started working with MyEclipse Blue as your IBM RAD replacement. There are 100s of features we didn't cover that could become your next favorite feature. In an effort to make you feel more comfortable with MyEclipse Blue, we wanted to point out some of the hottest and most popular features our users like using in the IDE. We hope you see a lot of things you like...

Matisse4MyEclipse Swing GUI Designer

Database Explorer

Advanced Persistence Tools

Enterprise Report Designer

Ajax Workbench and Tools

UML Tools

... JAX-RPC/JAX-WS Web Services, Spring, XDoclet, HTML/JSP/Struts/JSF Visual Page Designers, Facelets or support for whatever other technology you are utilizing in your project or want to utilize. We want MyEclipse Blue to be the only enterprise IDE you need.

9. Coming Soon

As mentioned above in Section 4, there are some project types and technologies that MyEclipse Blue doesn't offer direct support yet, but the team is working diligently to make sure support will be added shortly in a future release:

• JSR 168 Portlet Support
• RAD Project Migration Support
• Web Service Security Support
  
• Maven2 Support
  
• Integrated Application Profiler
• Swing Application Framework Support
• Improved Facelets Support
  
• ... popular user-demanded features
  

10. Resources

In this section we want to provide you with additional links to resources that supplement the topics covered in this tutorial. While this is not an exhaustive list, we do make an effort to point to the more popular links that should provide you with diverse, high-quality information.

MyEclipse Blue Edition and WebSphere Tutorials

• Installing WebSphere 6.1, JAX-WS, EJB 3.0 and Updates
• Creating a Data Source in WebSphere
• WebSphere 5.x, 6.0 and 6.1 Tutorial
• Developing JAX-RPC Web Services for WebSphere
• Developing JAX-WS Web Services for WebSphere

Additional Popular MyEclipse Blue Tutorials

• Struts 1.x Tutorial
• JavaServer Faces Tutorial
• Hibernate and Spring Tutorial
  
• JPA Tutorial
  
• Ajax Tools Tutorial
• Database Tools Tutorial
• UML Tutorial
  

11. Feedback

We would like to hear from you! If you liked this tutorial, has some suggestions or even some corrections for us please let us know. We track all user feedback about our learning material in our Documentation Forum.  Please be sure to let us know which piece of MyEclipse material you are commenting on so we can quickly pinpoint any issues that arise.