Click here for release notes for previous versions of BEA Workshop Studio.
Web Tools Platform (WTP)
The major feature upgrade from version 3.0 is that the Workshop Studio group of products now integrate Web Tools Platform (WTP) 1.0.2. This affects several functional areas, primarily:
Creating projects is now done using the WTP wizard. Projects created in version 3.0 must be upgraded.
Server management is done through the Servers view.
The following procedures have been changed and/or enhanced:
You must upgrade existing applications to explicitly enable AppXRay on your existing Workshop Studio 3.0 web projects in order for Studio's AppXRay and editors to be used.
This operation has no associated risks; it merely creates a top level .settings folder that contains the project files.
The .m7project file is no longer used and can be deleted, since it is replaced by the .settings/com.bea.workshopstudio file.
Use File > New > Dynamic Web Project to create a new blank project. As before, this will create a blank application containing the libraries and configuration files related to the project facets you choose (Struts, JSF, Hibernate etc).
Use File > New > Dynamic Web Project From Existing Source to create a new web project from existing source files.
Use File > New > Example to create a project for any of the examples and tutorials bundled with Workshop Studio.
Use New > Other to create web project artifacts. The Studio 3.0 New Web Artifact wizard no longer exists, but you will find all its commands (and much more) in the New > Other wizard under the Web, Struts, JaveServer Faces, Hibernate and EJB3 Persistence nodes.
Use the Servers view to create server configurations, and to run/debug web applications. The "Window > Preferences > Workshop > Server Configurations" dialog no longer exists. The Servers view can be shown from Window > Show View > Other > Server.
Use Window > Preference > Web and XML to control the JSP/HTML/XML source editor preferences. This gives much more settings than the old Workshop Studio source editor preferences.
You can now add Struts, JSF, EJB3 Persistence, Hibernate and JSTL capabilities to existing projects. See Project > Properties > Project Facets.
Workshop Studio 3.1 provides additional enhancements to the following areas in WTP:
Project Creation: Workshop Studio adds the ability to create a WTP dynamic web project from existing source files. You use File > New > Dynamic Web Project From Existing Source. The creation process will automatically detect and configure the facets used in the application during the AppXRay analysis.
JSP Debugging: Workshop Studio has its own JSP debugger which replaces the WTP debugger. Studio also adds the JSP Variables view to the Debug perspective.
Server Deployment: In addition to WTP's WAR and EAR deployment, Workshop Studio adds exploded deployment to all servers (deployment directly from workspace).
This enhances the development cycle by significantly speeding up server start time, and providing hot deployment for JSP and Java files (avoids lengthy manual republishing).
For Tomcat, the Workshop Studio deployer also provides built-in support for Sysdeo used to include external libraries in a web application.
JSP and XML editors: The Workshop Studio JSP and XML editors enhance the WTP editors by providing the AppXRay completion, validation and navigation.
Workshop Studio also enhances the WTP editing experience with fast and intuitive content validation and improved document navigation facilities.
WTP adds numerous features to Workshop Studio. Following are some of these features, for the complete list and details please refer to http://www.eclipse.org/webtools/:
EJB and EAR project types.
Web services creation.
Graphical WSDL editing.
Code completion for CSS and JavaScript in JSP/HTML files or in .css and .js files.
Source code auto formatting and cleanup (see the Format menu in the source editor context menu).
User defined code snippets for drag and drop from a special Snippets view (see Window > Show View > Other > Basic > Snippets).
User defined JSP/XML templates (see Window > Preferences > Web and XML > JSP Files > JSP Templates and Window > Preferences > Web and XML > XML Files > XML Templates). The templates you create here can be used as new file templates or code completion proposals.
XDoclet support.
Extensive preferences settings.
Other Changes and Upgrades
Drag and drop within the same page in the JSP design editor.
The documentation has been upgraded, including a new Hibernate tutorial. See File > New > Example > Hibernate > Workshop Hibernate Tutorial.
The free download BEA Workshop JSP Editor has been renamed to BEA Workshop for JSP. This change reflects the fact that beginning with the 3.0 release, Workshop for JSP added full iterative test and debug features to the previous editor features, for a complete professional development environment.
Changes to Supported Platforms
EJB3 Persistence - This release supports the final specification of EJB3 Persistence (aka JPA).
Full support is provided for BEA Kodo 4.0 as well as Hibernate Entity Manager 3.1 beta 8.
Struts -
This release supports Struts 1.2.9.
Hibernate - This release supports the latest Hibernate 3.1.3 and 3.2 rc2. Upgrading existing applications can be done using Project > Properties > Project Facets.
Spring IDE - Workshop Studio 3.1 bundles the Spring IDE 1.3. Please refer to http://springide.org/project for the Spring IDE features.
Given the WTP version dependency, Workshop Studio can no longer be installed on top of IBM's WSAD and RAD, which use previous proprietary versions of Eclipse and WTP.
