What's New in Version 3.2 (7/17/2006) for the Workshop Studio Family of Products
Highlights include:
Workshop for JSP:
New tutorial introduces Workshop for JSP and guides the user through the creation of a simple application (project) through running/debugging the application.
Workshop Studio:
New Spring support - Automatic generation of Spring artifacts from O/R mappings.
Automatic generation of Spring artifacts from O/R mappings;
Automatic generation of service methods for JPA and Hibernate named queries;
Support for JPA and Hibernate configuration specified in Spring beans file;
Support for database views in DbXplorer and SQL editor.
Improved Kodo support:
a Kodo facet;
integrated Kodo trial development license;
Kodo tutorial;
Support for the final EJB 3.0 spec for persistence and in conformance with industry usage, our documentation is upgraded to refer to EJB3 persistence as the Java Persistence API (JPA). We have also added a new JPA tutorial.
Support named queries in JPA and Hibernate. The entities editor now displays and offers graphical editing of named queries. If the project has a Spring facet, then you can also automatically generate Spring service methods that execute the named query.
Libraries for JSF, JSTL, Kodo, Hibernate, Spring and Struts are downloaded on first use. This means that you do not have to agree to licenses for these features unless and until you choose to use them in a project. This feature gives the user control over which jar files are copied to the project, and allow them to use an existing previously-downloaded version. This is also useful for adding updated versions of framework libraries.
Upgraded to Eclipse 3.2 and WTP 1.5 (the Callisto release of June 30/2006).
Upgraded documentation, including expanded documentation of supported servers.
New JSP tutorial for new users or Workshop for JSP downloaders -- carry through basic operations from start to finish.
Improved Debug/test features:
In the 3.2 release, several features have been reinstated and made fully compatible with WTP:
Hot deployment: Changes to application artifacts (e.g., the Struts configuration) are automatically deployed and the application restarted as necessary.
Manual deployment: Deploy and test a custom configuration.
Remote debugging: Run and debug applications on a remote server or on a local server that is managed outside the IDE.
Improvements to Infrastructure
Ability to share AppXRay database metadata - For very large applications, the AppXRay application database can now be shared among users (e.g., for a very large shared utility project) without rebuilding.
Trial period extended to 30 days (from previous 15 days).
Automatic Sysdeo installation and configuration for Tomcat.
Bug fixes and improvements geared toward making the Studio platform more useful and robust.
Considerations for Using Workshop Studio
The Workshop Studio group of products is targeted toward the iterative development experience rather than production deployment. As such, a number of features that work correctly in a standalone (development) server environment will not function as expected in a clustered deployment.
Important — Development and testing of applications using this release should be done using standalone server environments.
Additional features added to the 3.2 release too late to be included in the documentation:
Save State of ORM Generation Wizard
You can now save the state of the ORM Generation wizard prior to ORM Entity bean generation. This allows you to use the mapping wizard to specify some of your O/R mappings, save the state, and return at a later time to add additional mappings before generating. On the last page of the wizard, click Save wizard state to save the current mappings without generating.
Share AppXRay Database
If you have a shared project that takes a very long time to build (more than 15 minutes), you can build the AppXRay database on a single machine and then share it with other users. This technique should only be used for very large projects. There are two ways to do this:
If both users have a copy of the project files, with AppXRay disabled:
The first user enables AppXRay (right click on the project and choose Enable AppXRay) and allows AppXRay to build its database. The AppXRay status will be displayed by the project name in the AppXplorer view, and you must wait til the build completes and no more status messages are displayed.
The first user then copies the following folder from their workspace folder :
From the operating system, in the new shared folder, the first user deletes the file
.settings/com.bea.workshopstudio
The second user opens Workshop Studio and chooses New > Dynamic Web Project From Existing Source. For the project source, the second user specifies the new shared folder created by the first user.
The new project will be created with the files from the new shared folder, AppXRay will be enabled, and the AppXRay database will not need to be rebuilt. The ArtifactDb folder will not be copied to the new project, but instead will be installed into the workspace metadata folder automatically.
Note that this feature only works if BOTH users have version 3.2 installed. This feature does not work with previous versions.
Known Issues
This table lists the known issues in the 3.2 release of the Workshop Studio group of products.
Problem ID
Description
CR278829
Applications using the Java 5.0 or Java 6.0 compiler are not built correctly
If you try to build an application using compiler compliance level of 5.0 or 6.0 when Eclipse was launched with a lower version of the compiler, the application will not build correctly.
Platforms: all
Workaround: Launch Eclipse using the Java compiler version that is needed to build your applications.
CR285082
In Workshop for JSP, the Spring IDE features are disabled after the 30-day trial period
If you install the free download Workshop for JSP, when the 30-day trial version of Workshop Studio expires, Spring IDE features will be disabled.
Platforms: all
Workaround: Add the -clean command line option the next time you launch. You must run the -clean option once for every workspace.
CR285044
New Dynamic Web Projects that do not specify a Target Runtime default to Java 6.0.
When creating a new Dynamic Web Project, if the Target Runtime is set to <None>, Java will default to version 6.0. This could cause compatibility issues for frameworks and annotations that do not support Java 6.
Platforms: all
Workaround: During Dynamic Web Project creation, select the desired Java version (i.e., 5.0, 1.4, 1.3) from the facet pull down menu. On existing projects, modify the Java facet version under the project properties .
Release Notes for Previous Versions
For previous versions of the BEA Workshop Studio group of products, click here for release notes.