WebApplicationRADRace
Web Application RAD Race
On Oct 23, 2006, the NetBeans Java EE team did an internal "RAD Race" or development contest, whose purpose was to test NetBeans web development features in a real world scenario. Below is feedback from individual participants on things that either did not work, or could be improved in the IDE.
Milan: Easy testing of database connection in web project - test datasource on the server. E.g. see datasource nodes in the project. One reliable way to create a servlet and do "Use database", would like a simpler way, that would put the required things into web.xml and define it on the server (context.xml). Something like "Create a datasource in project" should be a user level action, that should work in a server-independent way. Should look at Creator.
Milan: JSP editor - drag and drop JSTL tags, but the taglib declaration is not added.
Petr P: In JSP code completion, offer all available tags, not just those already declared on the page.
Milan: When taglib declaration is missing and I am using tags from this taglib, this error is not detected and compilation/deployment passes. I have to debug this by "Show source" in browser.
Petr P: JSTL SQL tags should not be in the palette (maybe).
Tomasz: bug: JSF from Entity does not see Entity classes declared in another (library) project.
Tomasz: CRUD wizard should use standard convertors (from JSF RI) rather than generating new ones. Is this possible, or do we have to generate them? Not sure.
Petr P: General comment - talk to real users about code generated by CRUD wizard. Make the generated code customizable (use Velocity).
Andrei: Templateable generator for the CRUD wizard not specific to JSF. Allow the user to modify the templates so they can be used for another technology. Discussion about how doable this is (in a useful way): issue 88152
Petr P: Palette items for generating more fine grained code snippets based on data (entities).
Erno: bug: after adding a library to Tomcat's common/lib, it is not in code completion. issue 88158
Milan: deploy a library to the server
Tomasz: Regenerating CRUD pages after adding new entities does not work well.
Stepan: bug: adding a library to the server is not reflected in code completion classpath in the IDE until the IDE is restarted: issue 88127
Andrei: bug: with a Java library with partial sources (for only some of the classes), no code completion for classes that don't have sources (not reproducible in Retouche builds)
Erno: see decompiled source for classes
Martin: Deploy/Run/open in browser not intuitive
Andrei: need keyboard 2 shortcuts for redeploying classes: incremental deploy and full deploy: issue 88154
Petr J: incremental application refresh on the server after each Save
Petr P: configurable timeout for server deployment (creating tables by JPA may take long)
Petr P: redeployment problem with Tomcat - runs out of memory
Petr J: full redeployment should do Clean & Build
Petr P: after deleting a file, should be also deleted from the build area
Petr P: no javadoc for Java EE
Andrei: when opening sources of a library, usages of Java EE classes are marked as errors: issue 88156
Martin: no code completion in CSS editor, generally buggy
Andrei: DB2Java should generate @GeneratedValue annotation for autoincrement primary key of entity classes, as we can't easily get information about autoincrement columns: issue 76357
Milan: want history of SQL commands
Petr P: View Data always opens a new tab
Tomasz: copying output from View Data should be more discoverable
Martin: edit data in database
Petr P: export db structure into SQL commands
Martin: no help for writing JPA QL, testing mode
Petr P: want dynamic help in all editors
Petr P: Help -> Javadoc references should contain HTML reference etc.
Petr P: output from GlassFish generates very long lines (there is already an issue filed)
Andrei: problem with Clear button in Tomcat log window
Martin: option to leave the server running after shutting down the IDE
Petr P: NetBeans 6 does not attempt to import settings from 5.5, only 5.0
