Oracle Outlines Plans for Sun Products, Casts Doubt on NetBeans

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that a recent FAQ released by Oracle outlines the plans for many of Sun's popular products like GlassFish, MySQL, and NetBeans. Many are worried at some of the possible avenues the decisions outlined could lead to, especially with respect to NetBeans. "What should have happened, Oracle should not have missed a beat and should have announced work on Oracle plugins for NetBeans and active Oracle support of NetBeans. This type of announcement would have brought a large and some-what skeptical NetBeans community much closer to Oracle. It would have been a big win for Oracle. NetBeans will continue to grow either way - but Oracle has missed a big chance to really change perceptions and at the same time move their tools to another level. What JDeveloper lacks is buzz, a wealth of community developed plugins, a wealth of support for other languages and a very, very large community. And of course it does not offer a platform in the NetBeans and Eclipse sense of the word. This is a huge missed opportunity for Oracle."

Comments

Oracle Palns.

[CannonballHead]

http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/11/oracle-sun-palns

I don't know what palns are or why Oracle/Sun thinks they are important, but ...

Re:Oracle Palns.

[Icegryphon]

They are obfuscated plans I assume,
I guess they are going to try to give IBM a run for there money?

Netbeans just isn't there

[mapnjd]

Unfortunately for Netbeans zealots, it has never caught up with Eclipse. It may have surpassed it temporarily for certain apps (think Grails support - but look at STS 2.2.0). It's also not as good as IntelliJ IDEA (previously, always non-free).

Yes, both Netbeans and Eclipse are also RCP platforms, but how many real Netbeans platform apps are there? (The Nokia one on the web site is vapourware - yes it shows a real customer RAN - without their permission, I should add! - but it's never been a product delivered to customers). Real Eclipse RCP apps do exist (XMind, Lotus Smartsuite...). Realistically, they both over good RCP platforms (one pure Java, one SWT) but Oracle won't really care about that.

As for JDeveloper - well it's a typical Oracle product - if you're in an Oracle house, it's pretty good, but no, it's not got a large userbase or community supporting it.

Oracle should let Netbeans drift off into open source land. Perhaps it'll thrive? I don't know. JDeveloper's functionality should be ported to Eclipse (along with SQL Developer, while we're at it).

Oracle are great at giving you tools once you've signed up for the ride, and why not rebase your products on the best? Which in my opinion is Eclipse.

Re:Netbeans just isn't there

[Deth_Master]

Hmm, as a java development platform (and as a C/C++ development IDE) it is unrivaled by Eclipse. Things seem to work so much smoother in netbeans. You don't have to configure the shit out of it to use it. Most stuff follows the convention over configuration principle. At least that's the way it seems to me
Every time I use eclipse I'm surprised at the exceptional amount of options there are to do something simple. I rarely use them. Most of the options could be done with a couple bits of typing anyway.
As for the RCP stuff, I don't particularly care about that. I think eclipse has the upper hand in that stuff, as that's what it was designed to be in the first place, unlike Netbeans, which was designed to be a Java IDE.

Re:Netbeans just isn't there

[Deth_Master]

I think that might be part of the reason I don't like Eclipse. I don't get the functionality I want without customizing the crap out of it. That might be useful for some, but not for me. I like power, but I also like convention, so long as it follows the convention I use.

Re:Netbeans just isn't there

[multi io]

Yes, both Netbeans and Eclipse are also RCP platforms, but how many real Netbeans platform apps are there?

Well, with Eclipse, the IDE is pretty good, but the RCP platform -- not so much. It's quite obvious that this thing was designed to write Eclipse (IDE) plugins. For writing standalone applications, the whole approach seems overengineered. OSGI doesn't buy you much in that context, and one doesn't want to turn every small standalone app into a kind of mini-Eclipse, with simple things like command shortcuts and editor selection synchronizations being handled by 5 plugins interacting in complex ways. And then the whole SWT/native-UI-toolkit thing is bound to bite you at some point, e.g. if you're trying to have a table control with varying row heights, for God's sake.

Re:Netbeans just isn't there

[Joseph Lam]

Netbeans isn't there in terms of industry backing and support (which is what we hope Oracle will provide). As far as the software itself is concerned I find it to be at least as good if not better than Eclipse. It's been significantly improved over the last couple of years from version 4.x to 6.x. There are two things that I like it better than Eclipse:
- it's 100% Java and runs fine on anything that has a JVM (Eclipse's SWT has platform specific dependencies which prevented me from using it on 64bit machines, it took ages for it to have proper x64 support)
- better developer experience because of a cleaner and sensibly chosen set of plug-ins that all work out-of-the-box with no dependency hell (Eclipse plug-ins is a mess unless you pay for commercially packaged versions like MyEclipse)

Re:Netbeans just isn't there

[shutdown -p now]

Unfortunately for Netbeans zealots, it has never caught up with Eclipse.

It depends. In terms of how easy it is to create, say, an UI application, NetBeans is much better out of the box than Eclipse, especially its awesome visual Swing designer. I've also found J2ME development to be more of a breeze in NetBeans compared to Eclipse offerings.

The problem with Eclipse, it seems, is that it overemphasizes extensions to the point that, to do anything useful, you need some mix of extensions. And often there are several extensions available that do the same thing differently, so you have to pick. So it's kinda like Linux - it's pointless to debate it in general, because the specific experience really depends on one's set of extensions used.

NetBeans is much more of a "turnkey" approach - you download the full version, install it, and everything that it can do, is there and working. If you want web or J2EE development, you get the full stack of servers, too. In that, it's much closer to Visual Studio in approach (which may be a good or a bad thing depending on your perspective).

Re:Netbeans just isn't there

[blind biker]

I like Netbeans because it's easy to use. Perhaps Eclipse is useful for super-uber-professional programmers, but I do think Netbeans is the IDE for the rest of us. I like how everything seems to be self-explained and intuitive.

Re:Netbeans just isn't there

[farble1670]

Unfortunately for Netbeans zealots, it has never caught up with Eclipse.

that's an opinion that i'm guessing has either to do with how you use your IDE, or the fact that you haven't used netbeans in a while. i use both. i use netbeans for java / java EE development, and eclipse for android development (since netbeans doesn't have officially blessed android plugin).

leaving out the lack of an official android plugin, netbeans beats eclipse in every way. ease of use, plugins, stability, ease of install, flexibility, standards. the only thing i can say bad about netbeans is that it uses more resources that eclipse ...

That's the power of open source

[iamacat]

If Oracle is not interested, other people/companies will carry on the development. In general Sun customers should be applauding the foresight of the company to make pretty much every peace of their hardware and software Open Source and compare their situation to that of Peoplesoft or Siebel customers. Even if everything Sun is killed off tomorrow, it would still be possible to manufacture Sparc-based servers running Solaris and with applications developed using Java and Netbeans.

JDeveloper is great...

[wandazulu]

...if you want to interact with Oracle products. I tried really hard to use it, even using it as both a Java IDE and a PL/SQL IDE and, while yes, it does work, I found it too slow and clunky to just "bang out some code" when you need to write up a throwaway program really really fast.

But, like I said, if you want total interaction with your database or app server (assuming that app server is oc4j), then I suppose, if you have to use only a single tool, I guess, well, shrug, I guess it's better than nothing...I guess.

Re:It's the database, stupid.

[mbrod]

They shouldn't be allowed to own MySQL. Europe should shut that down and they should spin it off.

Consider the source.

[tomhudson]

TFA is quoting Gartner. When is the last time Gartner got something right? It's full of weasel words. Lots of "If ..."

Read what Oracle wrote. They're not abandoning NetBeans.

What are Oracle's plans for NetBeans?

Oracle has a strong track record of demonstrating commitment to choice for Java developers. As such, NetBeans is expected to provide an additional open source option and complement to the two free tools Oracle already offers for enterprise Java development: Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse. While Oracle JDeveloper remains Oracle's strategic development tool for the broad portfolio of Oracle Fusion Middleware products and for Oracle's next generation of enterprise applications, developers will be able to use whichever free tool they are most comfortable with for pure Java and Java EE development: JDeveloper, Enterprise Pack for Eclipse, or NetBeans.

Fuck Gartner. Fuck them in the heart.

Re:NetBeans? Really?

[gilesjuk]

It's slower than Eclipse but it does quite a few things Eclipse doesn't do well. A visual Java swing application designer that works for starters!

It's more stable too.

Given Oracle's Java procedure support in Oracle they're missing a trick, they should integrate SQL Developer and NetBeans to create a really good Java/Warehouse/BI tool.

Re:It's the database, stupid.

[shogarth]

SPARC is still quite relevant; there are few things as nice as running a multi-threaded set of applications on the Sun Niagara chips. If I were a database software outfit I would want to make sure there were two architectures out there (IBM POWER and something else) focusing on enterprise performance rather than media creation/encoding.

Take a look. Is there anything in the Intel or AMD product pipeline that will get you 2 x 10 Gb ethernet, 64 thread pipelines, and 128 GB of RAM in a 1U box? Even better, the price is really competative with buying the same performance worth of x86 gear in multiple boxes by the time you think about rack space, cooling networking and all the rest of the data center head aches.

As if Oracle cares...

[Angst Badger]

I hate to belabor the obvious here, but Oracle is not terribly concerned with what developers think about them. There are two reasons companies buy Oracle licenses: they either absolutely have to have them, or someone much further up the chain than the developers -- at least in most companies -- thinks that they do. From the altitude in the org chart where those decisions are made, there's no difference between us and the janitors.

Oracle is a big Eclipse supporter too - OEPE

[jambay]

Disclaimer - I work for Oracle and came from the BEA Systems acquisition.

My personal opinion is that Oracle is very dedicated to the entire Eclipse ecosystem as well as to JDeveloper. It's about choice. There is an entire free download product that is continually being enhanced called the Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse (Oh-Pee is how we say it within Oracle). In fact I believe it was one of the first, if not the first commercial IDE to support the latest Eclipse 3.5 Galileo. http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/enterprise-pack-for-eclipse/index.html OEPE is targeted for Java and JEE developers and is mostly about supporting the Java standards. Additionally, the majority of the TopLink code was donated as the EclipseLink project and is currently the JPA reference implementation. Just take a look at the presence has at the next Eclipse conference and I think you will see that Oracle is committed to Eclipse. http://www.eclipse.org/eclipselink/

When you get into the "upper-stack" components like SOA Suite for integration and WebCenter Suite for enterprise portal development, and Oracle's Application Development Framework (ADF) that Oracle strongly recommends JDeveloper. Those products have been based on JDeveloper for a long time and the user-experience developing for those products is extremely smooth because Oracle can influence everything about the IDE. If you want to do Java and JEE development in JDeveloper, you can do that too. It's your choice.

Re:NetBeans? Really?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

I use both. I like Netbeans since 6.x, and I still use eclipse on some legacy projects.

Eclipse is snappier at times, but it reeks of being created by a committee of competitors and a pain in the ass at times to setup for anything more substantial than editing (Subclipse or Subversive as a case in point). However, once you get it working, it works fairly well.

The latest incarnation of Netbeans has more features out of the box and a whole lot easier to install and get to work with your SCM and etc.

Both work sufficiently well as an IDE.

Re:It's the database, stupid.

[dingen]

I'm surprised they kept the SPARC line alive. It just doesn't seem to be necessary any more, and it was a money drain for Sun.

Well actually, the most common platform for Oracle deployment is Solaris on SPARC. So it doesn't seem so strange to me that Oracle isn't ditching their most used hardware platform now that they own it.

Re:NetBeans? Really?

[SnapShot]

I agree. I used Eclipse for years but I've started using Netbeans 6.7 for more and more. The problem we have where I work is that we do PHP projects and Java projects. Six or eight months ago we were having real trouble getting getting PDT to play nice and, so far, NetBeans just works and switching between projects is very easy.

Anyway, they are both great IDE's that continue to get better and better. If I have to switch back to Eclipse is won't be a major sacrifice, but I'll be unhappy that there won't be a free IDE competitor to keep the Eclipse devs motivated :-)

Re:NetBeans? Really?

[fusiongyro]

I started professionally programming Java about two months ago and hadn't had any experience with it before.

First impression of Eclipse: it's slow, there were display artifacts. It's versioning scheme was clearly designed with pride rather than usability in mind (which is newer, Galileo or Ganymede, and how can you tell?). I could never find the correct Subversion plugin (was I supposed to be using Subclipse or Eclipse Subversion?). Both of them seemed to depend on other plugins which I was supposed to choose between or manually install. Ran into similar issues with Maven integration. The plugin had a clever name and once installed I never really figured out how to make it "go." I only have so much time to spend any given day on configuring my editor. Both coworkers who used Eclipse also helpfully assured me that I'd have to reinstall it every six months or so, because it tends to "go bad" after a while. Not a great sign.

On a whim I downloaded NetBeans. Nobody in my software group was using it, apparently older versions had turned them off completely. Out of the box, it opens Maven projects and the integration is seamless, and it has Subversion and Mercurial integration out of the box. For a new user, the out-of-the-box experience with NetBeans today beats Eclipse hands-down. Especially coming into a professional environment with many moving parts integrated.

The story isn't perfect. NetBeans takes forever and a day to start up. It also can get unresponsive from time to time. You can sink your whole day into configuring it. Plugin integration seems to in general be better than with Eclipse (at least to me) but configuration is a bit worse; everything seems to get thrown under that one tab in the preferences. It tries to manage Tomcat for me but I usually wind up manually force-quitting it (our app probably has a memory leak) because NetBeans' Terminate option doesn't ever seem to do anything. And there have been plenty of confusing issues. Tab completion worked in EL in our JSF facelets, but only inside in a valid XHTML file; figuring that out took an afternoon. I'm still not altogether sure how to get the relationships between multiple projects right.

If I were going to summarize my opinion of NetBeans as a two month user, I'd say: usually it just works but when it doesn't, it's hard to figure out how to fix it. The situation with Eclipse seems to me to be more like, there's a plugin out there that does what you need, good luck figuring out how to get it installed and use it.

Prior to using Java and NetBeans, I mainly did PHP and Ruby plus some other miscellaneous on a Mac with TextMate, Emacs or Coda, depending on the situation. From a usability perspective, Coda in particular but also TextMate are wonderful tools. NetBeans and Eclipse both do some space-age cool stuff but their usability isn't quite up to par. Lots of things are slow that don't seem like they should be, like switching tabs and opening files, and fundamentals tend to be screwy. For example, in NetBeans, if I'm debugging an app and have an SQL window open, there will be three green play icons on my screen. One of them runs the app in not-debug mode, one of them continues from a breakpoint, and one of them runs the SQL command. None of these have particularly memorable shortcuts and their icons are too similar. NetBeans will happily run and deploy the app while I have it at a break point in a debugging session, though the exact intended meaning of that action would be hard to guess.

All in all, if you have a day to throw at it, I recommend giving NetBeans a shot. Two of my three coworkers wound up switching. It also has better Vim integration, if that's relevant to you.