As the development is been undertaken
using the JAVA programming language the choice of development
environment is currently not an issue, due to the standard
architecture of the JAVA language, the resultant class files
generated by an IDE are identical in the respect that the JAVA SDK
is used to compile the source code into bite code, and is not a
function of the IDE.
In the
current development environment there are several IDE's have been
used.
JBuilder
Visual Age For JAVA
NetBeans
Each of the environments provides the
capability to write and compile the JAVA code. Of the IDE's listed
Jbuilder and NetBeans both work directly on the source or through
version control software, Visual Age requires the use of a
repository, this can be centralized in the case of the Enterprise
edition. The choice of the IDE is not as important as the other
members of the toolset and as such will probably remain as is until
at the current time with Jbuilder and NetBens taking priority.
With the onset of more complex
development and deployment involved with EJB Visual Age will be come
more prevalent, and a move to this environment in the medium to long
term will on the cards.