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Review: M7 NitroX 2.0 J2EE IDE
by Drew Falkman
It's ironic that J2EE is pushing its fifth version soon and it's
still all but impossible to find a good integrated development
environment (IDE). OK, yes, there are a few proprietary ones—but
doesn't that go against the whole notion of using an "open" platform?
I dare say so. I stumbled upon M7's NitroX recently,
and I had a good feeling about it. They were saying all the
right things, so I had to take it for a test ride.
Introduction
Other tools available for constructing and editing J2EE applications seem to be divided into two camps: the full Java IDE which is more of an object-oriented, hardcore-coder interface and the Web IDE which is generally focused on the scripting and layout of HTML pages.
The former type of editor is fine for developing and compiling Java classes, but usually falls short when it comes to the user interface. And the latter type is just the opposite—great for interface layout and simple scripting, but doesn't support building or Java class development at all.
Those of us who haven't committed to a proprietary platform like BEA or WebSphere end up using two different IDEs for the different parts of our applications (I generally use Eclipse with plug-ins for class development and Dreamweaver MX 2004 for Jabberers Pages). This works OK. And I mean that with a soft "O" and a soft "K," because when it gets down to it, the relationship between all these objects is really only visible in one location: my brain. Sound familiar?
This is where I'm hoping that M7's NitroX can help us. NitroX has new ways to view JSP, Struts, and (coming soon) JavaServer Faces front ends taking into full consideration the Java objects (or Struts objects) running the engine.
Requirements, Installation, and Setup
To start, NitroX installs on Windows 2000 and XP or Linux (RedHat 9+ or Fedora Core 2+). You will need a minimum of 512 MB RAM and a Java Runtime Engine 1.4.x or higher on Windows or 1.5 or higher on Linux.
Three installation options are available:
- Standalone: Installs along with Eclipse 3.0.
- Eclipse Add-on: Allows you to run NitroX with Eclipse 2.1 or 3.0.
- IBM WebSphere Add-on: Allows you to run NitroX with IBM WSSD 5.1.x or WSAD 5.1.x.
NitroX supports debugging and deployment on the following:
- Apache Jakarta Tomcat 5.0.x, 4.1.x and 4.0.x
- BEA WebLogic Server 8.1 and 7.0
- Caucho Resin 3.0
- IBM WebSphere 5.x
- JBoss 4.0.x and 3.2.x
I installed the standalone JSP-only version on Windows XP (with Service Pack 2, if you can believe) without issue.
The next step was to configure an application. I imported an existing application and I also created a new one. Both were easy and responded as predicted.
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