Cool Tools / discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page Cool Tools.

Anonymous (123.100.91.x) 1171768340|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I noticed in the testing section, you aren't mentioning SOAPUI (soapui.org). This has become an invaluable tool in our box at work.

Re: soapui

Anonymous (200.42.99.x) 1175104738|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I have used it recently and I agree with you. SoapUI is an excellent and powerful tool to test web services.

Anonymous (123.100.91.x) 1171768356|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Some of the tools I use regularly are: (1) Code quality: Cobertura (highly rated), jdepend, jlint, pmd (2) Build: vizant lets us visualise complex Ant files (3) Framework: Spring

Anonymous (123.100.91.x) 1171768379|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

PMD++;

Anonymous (123.100.91.x) 1171768729|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

So IDE is not java tool? if so, IDEA should be the 1st runner.

Anonymous (123.100.91.x) 1171768750|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

How about apache Maven?

Anonymous (123.100.91.x) 1171768766|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

The cajo project (https://cajo.dev.java.net) for network application development, makes my day!

Anonymous (123.100.91.x) 1171768790|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

maven!

Anonymous (123.100.91.x) 1171768809|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

FindBugs as a code quality tool: http://findbugs.sourceforge.net/

Anonymous (123.100.91.x) 1171769039|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

GNU Emacs for everything!!!

Anonymous (123.100.91.x) 1171769246|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Checkstyle : http://checkstyle.sourceforge.net/

Anonymous (123.100.91.x) 1171769263|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Tudu Lists http://tudu.sourceforge.net/ for "getting things done" with a distributed team of developers

Scriptella ETL

Anonymous (80.94.228.x) 1172095274|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Scriptella ETL for database upgrade/initialization and migration. I find this tool useful for in-memory testing also.

EMMA

Anonymous (64.215.87.x) 1172185306|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

You can't have cobertura without having emma. http://emma.sourceforge.net/

JIRA

Anonymous (85.177.244.x) 1172350257|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

JIRA! Much better than Scarb or Bugzilla

Re: JIRA

Anonymous (194.0.169.x) 1173428281|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Agree. Even though Jira do costs some $$$, it should be evaluated before a company decides which issue tracker to use. It rocks (if you have cash or are coding open source) :)

EMMA

Anonymous (151.42.178.x) 1172437636|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Vote for Emma (a pity is neglected, lately) and Maven2

Ant + Ivy

Anonymous (82.237.171.x) 1172745677|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Ant + Ivy makes a very good combination for industrial strength builds on which you keep control.

PMD nice, but..

Anonymous (62.190.230.x) 1172764834|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I like PMD, it has got me out of a lot of sloppy habits I'd decended into, but it does have its own funnies! The one I particularly like is the warning about "No constructor…", so you have the IDE fill in a default constructor and PMD issues a warning "Default constructor, the compiler will generate one…". An intersting contradiction that makes me smile.

Anonymous (171.161.224.x) 1172786022|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

SchemaSpy is something every developer who has to use a database should have in his arsenal.

A new metrics tool

Anonymous (70.189.212.x) 1172895863|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Panopticode is an open source project dedicated to simplifying the
collection of software metrics and providing analysis and visualization
tools that enlighten developers and managers.

The initial release supports:

• Treemaps of code coverage
• Treemaps of complexity
• Fully integrated support for Emma, JavaNCSS, and Emma
• Metrics gathered for CheckStyle, Cobertura, Complexian, Simian, and

Subversion

The focus of this release is treemaps. In his article, "Discovering
Business Intelligence Using Treemap Visualizations," Ben Schneiderman
explains that "Treemaps are a space-filling approach to showing
hierarchies in which the rectangular screen space is divided into regions,
and then each region is divided again for each level in the hierarchy." In
the case of Java projects that is the natural project -> package -> file
-> class -> method hierarchy.

You can learn more about Panopticode at http://www.panopticode.org

Structure101 - Measure & Control Your Architecture

Anonymous (82.65.61.x) 1173269387|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Structure101 does a great job in helping you keep your architecture in check.

Another Best Java News Sites

Anonymous (220.247.234.x) 1174032920|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

This is another Free HooFoo.Net site. Initially we are going to build up best java resource site. Java™'s growth over the last seven years has been nothing short of phenomenal.
There are many java news, java resources sites, etc on the net. See our java news directory for all java news in one location. Find out java resources directory for your java solutions.

http://java.hoofoo.net

Testing javascript with Firebug

Juan Jose Zapico 1175105953|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

The book outline have an entry named "Testing javascript with JSTester". I think that Firebug must be mentioned too. Although I don't use it yet (I'm not working with Ajax stuff) looks like a very poweful tool. Some references are:

Firebug homepage
http://www.getfirebug.com/

Firebug tutorial (gives you an excellent tour on various features):
http://www.digitalmediaminute.com/screencast/firebug-js/

"An In-depth Look At The Future of JavaScript Debugging With Firebug" article:
http://encytemedia.com/blog/articles/2006/05/12/an-in-depth-look-at-the-future-of-javascript-debugging-with-firebug

Re: Testing javascript with Firebug

wakaleo 1175369256|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Thanks, I'll check it out.

The Fractal Class Composition

Anonymous (194.237.142.x) 1177065415|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Hmm, well The Fractal Class Composition is a design technique, but it is backed-up by a Java static code analyser: Fractality. I'm not sure whether you're particularly interested in dependency management strategies like this, though; most shops concentrate on mavenesque build and deployment dependency strategies rather than design-level dependencies.

See:
http://www.edmundkirwan.com/fracdoc/frac-page10.html

My preferred tools

Anonymous (58.186.16.x) 1177337270|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

The tools I use everyday:

• el4ant for build (http://el4ant.sourceforge.net), based on ant but easier to use (I find)
• JUnit, DBUnit, abbot (for Swing GUI testing, sorry no web here…)
• Checkstyle (+CheckClipse)
• Eclipse 3.2 + UltraEdit (I don't always launch Eclipse)
• EMMA
• Jetty (for launching server during automatic acceptance testing), much faster than tomcat
• Subversion (+ TortoiseSVN)
• Derby (for DB and acceptance testing)

So far, I am plainly satisfied with all those tools.
I hope to soon set up and use the following tools:

• CruiseControl
• profiler4j (I currently use JMP but am not fully satisfied with it)

Code Comprehension Tools

Anonymous (97.99.117.x) 1178681604|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

The focus in this book appears to be "green field" or new projects - which is great.
Eventually a project releases and membership changes as people move on and are replaced by new members. I've found the following tools useful when arriving at a new project or job.

• Doxygen: Doxygen home page a free, open source, code cross referencer that has added diagramming tools to depict relationships between modules
• Understand for Java:Understand product page not free (about $495) but easier to use than Doxygen. Also supports C/C++. I really like the support provided for observing a project from a global graphical level and then drilling into code and exploring relationships. It's great for doing impact analysis of refactoring and changes.

Re: Code Comprehension Tools

Anonymous (123.100.90.x) 1179047826|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Yes, decent, useful automatically generated technical reference documentation is invaluable for maintenance work. Thanks for the tip on DOxygen - I'm working on the SchemaSpy chapter at the moment, and DOxygen seems to take a similar approach, but for Java code. I may well include some material on this tool in the book.

JFS.

Re: Code Comprehension Tools

Anonymous (32.106.8.x) 1179904881|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

While we are talking about tools to help manage and control existing applications I would like to mention StatCVS which helps you via CVS log analysis to understand which files are the most important ones because they got the most edits.
Sometimes even a simple sort for filesize is a great tool in finding monster classes.

Re: Code Comprehension Tools

wakaleo 1180301082|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Absolutely. StatCVS (along with it's cousin StatSVN) are mentioned in the book - they are great tools for keeping taps on how the source code base evolves over time.

Simunicator - prototyping

Anonymous (24.89.247.x) 1182393838|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Hey, what better way to get the SDLC off to the right start. We use Simuncator to build exact prototypes to spec …not a typical drawing tool, this is for developers where you can plug in front end code (HTML, CSS, Javascript) and back end code (Beanshell, Velocity) ..all done online with a browser so quick to share via a URL, and with a free acount … http://www.simunication.com

Cenqua

Anonymous (67.98.28.x) 1182453569|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

How about Cenqua's tools (Fisheye, Clover, Crucible)? Though they are not open source, they are very nice.

Hibernate plugin for Eclipse

Anonymous (125.238.120.x) 1182474576|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

For those coding Hibernate in Eclipse, they have got
to try out Hiberante plugin as described from

http://www.hibernate.org/Modules/HibernateToolsViewlets

• HQL Editor

http://www.hibernate.org/hib_docs/tools/viewlets/edit_and_run_hql.htm
prototyping HQL in HQL editor, see the generated SQL and
actually executing it to see if it works without coding Java

• Criteria Query Editor

good for prototyping Criteria Query. Same thing as above.
http://www.hibernate.org/hib_docs/tools/viewlets/edit_and_run_criteria.htm

• For HQL/JPA syntax checking and code completion

http://www.hibernate.org/hib_docs/tools/viewlets/java_hql_editing_and_validation.htm

Monitoring Build Statistics

dvicente72 1182754437|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Hi,

to monitor quality statistics for project, i'm using :

- http://mojo.codehaus.org/dashboard-maven-plugin/: a Maven 2 plugin written by me for a single project (with or without multi-modules
- http://sonar.hortis.ch/ : a Maven 2 plugin + a Jetty application to monitor all projects for a company

last edited on 1182779113|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover by dvicente72 + show more

Cruisecontrol

Anonymous (74.86.235.x) 1196177305|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Cruisecontrol could be an interesting topic for the book.

Scriptella

Anonymous (87.252.227.x) 1203281679|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I've successfully used Scriptella to migrate from MySQL to DB2 and PostgreSQL. It works fine.

jWebUnit and HttpUnit

Anonymous (220.225.84.x) 1204264837|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

We started writing functional tests using HttpUnit and later migrated to jWebUnit. I believe these are worth mentioning in your book.
thanks,
moc.siralcca|eejrenab.hbaruas#moc.siralcca|eejrenab.hbaruas

jTrac for Issue and Task Tracking

Anonymous (220.225.84.x) 1204265474|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

We are using jTrac to track issues and task at Acclaris (www.acclaris.com). We have offices in Tampa, Kansas City in USA, Kolkata, Vizag and Siliguri in India. With jTrac it is very easy to setup multiple workspaces and define your own customized workflow and custom fields for each workspace. It deploys as a war file.

moc.siralcca|eejrenab.hbaruas#moc.siralcca|eejrenab.hbaruas

Scriptella ETL

Anonymous (217.21.35.x) 1204810684|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

We use Scriptella ETL to import test data in CSV format. Scriptella is also used to initialize an in-memory database for jUnit tests.

Cobertura is Test Coverage

Anonymous (202.78.230.x) 1205563157|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I think Cobertura is Test Coverage instead of Testing

StackTrace

Anonymous (10.8.1.x) 1206052164|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

StackTrace from http://www.adaptj.com for monitoring and production mode debugging.

Scriptella is great

Anonymous (75.61.3.x) 1211981055|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

We used Scriptella to move select data from a Microsoft SQL Server DB to a MySQL DB. It has worked great and was able to handle many complex use cases. It saved us a lot of time. The support from the author is great. I am very impressed.

Re: Scriptella is great

jobine (guest) 1229940632|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Hi ,

Can you let us know what were the issues which u faced during the migration using scriptella?

As in my project we are planning to integrate the scriptella with another data migration tool.

Findbugs

Anonymous (216.178.128.x) 1213054049|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I find Findbugs really useful ++++

My Vote for Trac

William Ghelfi (guest) 1254733028|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Trac + huge amount of Plugins for the win.