Monday, October 27, 2008

My Favourite NB Plugin

My Favorite NB plug in
In almost all of the commercial project, that I have done till now, I have needed a reporting tool like Crystal report provides on Microsoft development platform.
To short it out, I wrote my own HTML plug in for Java. Though it is very easy to use ,But it lacked professional touch.
Working with java.awt.PrintJob is not that useful either.
Very recently, I took this problem seriously. I started searching for a better solution. In course I searched Netbeans plug in site and came to see Jasper Report plug in.
It took me just 2 days to understand the whole architecture. The support , it provides is amazing.
And for very high class development , there is Java compatible Jasper designer, which can be used in parallel to Netbeans for report Designing.
It has a superb support and compatibility with Java collection API and Java SQL API
Reports generated can be saved in many different formats inherently. I believe this is one of the Must for real time commercial developers.

What lies ahead: Netbeans

NB future
I am a Netbeans user since NB 4 and am a big fan of it. It has always given me more than expected. I give full credit to Netbeans for my Fame / fortune / Expertise.
When I trained my colleagues on Netbeans they used to sing the appreciation of Microsoft Visual studio for easy GUI designing. Few of them, the Java developers also gave the same feedback, like there is no way to align in center position or even parallel in Netbeans up to 5.5 GUI designer.
I think , perhaps people at Netbeans were listening all of this, and In NB 6 they provided all of this.
Now, the Mattise is even better.
Recently added support for Visual JSF is amazing , but little slow .But that is a minor issue if you have sufficient memory.
With NB 6.5 , I see a serious challenge to Microsoft visual studio / .NET development suit.
Considering the fact that NB community is one of the biggest in the world with the best brain at work, I believe it will be the only development IDE in coming future.
Recently added out of box support for PHP, C/C++, Ruby and all is amazing. NB is getting equally popular among PHP and ruby developers not just Java.
And , as it is the most proffered IDE for student community around the world,in coming years I see no reason they are going to compromise with it for any reason.
Netbeans plug in is another feature that draws my attention. It has crossed 10,000 marks officially and I believe it is at least 5 times more unofficially.
Recently, I was looking for a Date Picker plugin , and in a single search I found it.
I believe , there is no other community as dynamic as this one.
I remember another instance . I developed a tool in Java/Swing using JDK 1.6 . The client had JDK 1.5 and it was not possible for them to switch to 1.6, so they asked me to make it compatible with 1.5 instead. I just posted this and believe me, I got reply within 5 minutes (from some one in architecture team of Netbeans).
I firmly believe , in long run, only those community stand which have goal ,vision and strength.
I see,NB community has all that they need. NB community has a one line vision “Be the best”.
Recently, their pioneer work for on hit compilation , digging the Java Compiler is an example of the zeal of their excellence.
And the appreciation for all of this is far clear. Whenever I search for an article/ topic on Java, most of the result come from Netbeans blogger / community site.
The status and depth Netbeans has achieved in 10 years is amazing. I am very sure, no other tool/technology has made such remarkable foot print in this sort span.
Long live Netbeans.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

My Experience with Netbeans Demo

I am campus ambassador,Sun microsystems. I got to demonstrate Netbeans very often in my campus.
But this was my first time , when i was demonstrating it away from my campus.
I think , it is worth a review :)

I was at Bangalore this summer. I was staying with one of my old friend Raushan. He is doing MCA 4th year from Dayanand Sagar College.
When I was their, I got to know that they are working on a project on J2EE.
They were 4 in a group and were not that good in J2EE, but they had good idea. All they were looking for was a good IDE.
Some one suggested them of using Eclipse , and they started working on it. But , what I felt was it was not working the way they were looking for.
When my friend introduced me to them, (as Sun CA ), I felt they ere just looking for me. All of them were truly Java passionate and started to ask every thing about Java.
And as expected , in a short span of time, we became good friend. I also got a new name : Java Master
in that small time.
Next day, they discussed about their project and asked me for help.
Myself , not an expert in J2E , but had fair idea of designing project. First I introduced them to Netbeans (I had a DVD of NB 6 at that time) and in no time, I installed it on their PC.
With little effort, I imported their Eclipse project to Netbeans. I discussed abut project architecture, like beans, core logic and pages. They got it and started working on it.
I used pure JDBC logic for databases (They were using Mysql) and because of its simplicity they understood it in no time.
In next 3 to 4 days, at least 30 of their friends discussed about Netbeans to me and installed it.
I was surprised to see, how productive they became just after working on Netbeans.
In my everyday life I come across many person, specially few who advocate using Not pad for Java code development. But , I then I don't miss any chance to show to them ,how working on Netbeans changes the standard of programming.
Recently a representative of IBM came to our college to demonstrate about their tools (Eclipse and WAS ) . While demonstrating , he conceded “In most of the university that I have visited, I have seen students working on Netbeans”.
Its not a miracle why students (and even professionals) prefer Netbeans. And I personally see no reason to use any other IDE as far as I have Netbeans.

My experiences with Netbeans

How I use Netbeans

I started using Netbeans when I was in My 2nd year of Engineering (i.e. starting of year 2006).
I had just started Java programming and was puzzled for how to compile and run programs.

My Faculty suggested about how to write code on Notepad, then javac - ing to compile and finally java to run.
This was obviously a tedious task for me as I remember. Also I dint know how to set class path at that time, so the only way to compile and run was to save my java program to java\jdk\bin folder.
Again, on most of the PCs in my lab had disk protection and java\jdk\bin folder was protected, so it was sort of hell.

But fortunately in that time, once when I was browsing sun.com, I came to see about Netbeans IDE.
I remember, it took me some 2 days effort to install IDE. (at that time I didnt know what JVM and javac is. I had no jdk and I was trying to install Net Beans .).
The first version I used was Netbeans 5.0. During my summer vacation (which happens to be of 3 months) , I did nothing but tried programs on Netbeans. It was little problem initially , as I had 256 MB ram on my PC and it was disappointingly slow there, but finally the patience ultimately pays.
I tried multiple programs from different text books specially from “Complete reference” and “Deitel”
.I learn all of my Java skills without any support from any one. All I took help from was that of Netbeans. I developed a habit of writing initComponent() and coding style of Netbeans even when I wrote programs on other Editor (like Notepad).
By the end of summer vacations , I had fairly good idea of programming. At that time, I got a small project from one of my friend , to develop a software for Ware House Management.
I give full credit to Netbeans for on time development of my Program. My first project was successful and it fetched me Rs 7000.
And after that , I did more than 30 small and medium projects all In Java. In course I mastered Mysql.
Some 6 months ago, I proposed “Campus Management System” to my university authority and they passed it.

In our campus, I w as the first Java developer (and developer in general). And exceptionally , all fellow
students of mine took serious interest in Java programming. Currently , 100 % programmers in my campus do programming on Java / Netbeans.

By now, we are a team of 30+ committed developers ,all very comfortable in Netbeans. We have a LAN network and we use CVS of Netbeans to develop projects.
As my expertise grew, I started searching more facilities in NB , and different versions provided them more than I expected.
Currently I use NB 6.5 and am very happy with it. I wait very eagerly for higher version of it , and perhaps I am one of the first down loader of most of Higher versions.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Phase - 1 :How it all begun

NetBeans



Hello guys
I started Java some 3 years ago .At that time, I was only familiar with C programming and little with VB.
Unfortunately no one around me could guide me for it. A friend suggested that it needs to download jdk 1.4 to compile and run java programs.
When I was searching for jdk 1.4 I got links of NetBeans .After reading about it and installation instruction, I downloaded it and installed it on my PC with little effort.
At that time , there was no book in our library about java .So I simply used to Drag & drop and some blind exploration on netbeans only . I downloaded some tutorials from various sites and tried them.
Method listing and its java doc was very helpful and slowly I got to work with many components well. I used to work mostly on GUI components.
At that time I was so comfortable with these GUIs that I dared to grab a project in Java from a low Profile company from Delhi.
Later came many books in our library and it greatly enhanced my skills. Especially the books from sun microsystem are really good.

I owe my Java skills to Netbeans. It would have taken much longer if I have used any other IDE I believe.
Continued ...