Today NetBeans 5.5 final version was released. This version gives you Java 1.5, EJB 3.0, enterprise pack, visual web pack, and a number of other enhancements. What's really exciting is that Visual Web Pack was released today as a Technical Preview. It hasn't been available for download until today. It is the visual web features of Sun Creator Studio turned into a NetBeans addon. Sun Creator Studio is a really neat web-tier visual JSF design tool built on top of NetBeans 4. By moving it into Visual Web Pack you get to use the same features but in the NetBeans 5.5 (java 1.5, ejb 3.0, etc) and you now have one IDE for everything. With 5.5 Sun has also moved the enterprise features from their Sun Enterprise Studio into a NetBeans addon. This gives you BPEL, visual XML schema designer, UML tools, and a couple more things. I really love this -- everything in a single IDE now.
Recently I purchased the SCJP practice exam from Sun. I get 180 days of unlimited usage. Tonight I tried it for the first time and got 74%. I'm dissapointed but this is the first time out of many many practice exams I'll do before the real one in a few weeks. This is encouraging to me because it means I would have passed. There are three practice exams you get to work with. If you do the same exam multiple times, it's always the same questions. I completed the first one. I wonder if they get progressively harder?
Working from his home office in Toronto,
Ryan de Laplante can be found developing software in
Java by day, and obsessing with technology by night.
Ryan has been designing and writing software for
IJW since 1998 and is very passionate about his work.
