JDeveloper is a free IDE from Oracle. It offers features for development in Java, XML, SQL and PL/SQL, HTML, JavaScript, BPEL and PHP. JDeveloper covers the full development lifecycle from design through coding, debugging, optimization and profiling to deploying. It became free in 2005.

With JDeveloper, Oracle has aimed to simplify application development by focusing on providing a visual and declarative approach to application development in addition to an advanced coding environment. In addition Oracle JDeveloper integrates with the Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) - an end-to-end J2EE based framework that further simplifies application development.

Oracle JDeveloper is the main development platform for Oracle's tools. The core IDE exposes an API that other teams in Oracle use to build extensions to JDeveloper. BPEL, Portal, BI and other components of the Oracle platform all build their design time tool on top of JDeveloper. The same IDE platform also serves as the basis of another Oracle product, SQL Developer, which is geared specifically at PL/SQL and database developers.

Features

JDeveloper comes in three editions; each one offers more features on top of the others, and all of them are free. A high level list of features includes:

Java Edition

Java SE 5 Support

Code Editor

Code Navigation

Refactoring

Swing

Unit Testing

Version Control (however, branching is not supported by the internal CVS client)

Audit & Metrics

Debugging

Profiling

Ant Support

XML Support

Open API & Extensions

User Assistance

J2EE Edition

JSP

Struts

JSF

EJB

TopLink

Web Services

UML

Database Development

Deployment & Management

Studio Edition

ADF Databinding

ADF Faces

ADF Mobile

ADF Business Components

ADF Swing

ADF Deployment

BPEL Designer

ESB Designer

Portlet Development

Portlet/JSF Bridge

History

The first version of JDeveloper (1998) was based on a licensing of the JBuilder product from Borland. JDeveloper went through a complete rewrite to be based on Java, for its 9i (2001) version. The 10g version (9.0.5) showcased the first release of the revamped Oracle ADF. In 2006, still under the 10g tag, and after significant delays, Oracle released version 10.1.3 - the latest major release. In October 2006 Oracle released version 10.1.3.1 that added support for the final EJB3.0 spec along with BPEL and ESB design time. In January 2007 Oracle released version 10.1.3.2 that adds the WebCenter capabilities such as creating and consuming portlets, portlet/JSF bridge, and content repository data control. A technology preview release of version 11g was released in May 2007. More details here:

Visual and Declarative

The JDeveloper code editor offers a rich set of coding features and helpful utilities and visual utilities that provide a different view of the code as well as the declarative dialogs helping in creation of J2EE components.

For example JDeveloper provides a visual WYSIWYG editor for HTML, JSP, JSF, and Swing. The visual editor allows developers to modify the layout and properties of components visually and the code is changed for them. Any changes in the code will be instantly reflected in the visual view. Similar experience is provided for both JSF and Struts page flows.

Declarative features enable you for example to generate EJBs or POJO based on existing tables in databases. JDeveloper automates the creation of J2EE artifacts - for example with a simple click you can turn a java class into a Web Service and JDeveloper will generate the WSDL and all the required JAX-RPC components.

License

JDeveloper is free for development and deployment. Oracle ADF has a runtime license when deployed outside of an Oracle Application Server. For further details, see the Oracle Technology Network Developer License Terms for JDeveloper here: http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/popup-license/jdev-license.html