XDEV releases XDEV 2 Java IDE

The XDEV Software Corp. has released its XDEV 2 Java development environment under the XDEV open source licence as a free community edition. As reported in May 2009, the Californian software vendor had already placed the related Java Application Framework under the CPL-compatible licence. The community edition must be used exclusively for the development of single-user applications (single-user applications) Database accesses are allowed only to locally installed databases. For the development of multi-user (multiuser) applications, multi-tier distributed applications, for applications accessing server databases, applications developed for resale or for use of XDEV 2 Team server, users must purchase a Business Edition licence.

According to the vendor, XDEV 2 mainly targets users with a background in 4GL, Basic, or Delphi who want to switch to Java effortlessly, without spending months familiarising themselves with the language. The IDE is reportedly suitable for building Access and Visual Basic style Java-based database applications. The GUI builder utilises graphical objects. Without any Java know-how, users can apparently design Swing interfaces.

The IDE's core component is the Application Framework already mentioned. It provides important GUI and database application features Java developers usually have to program themselves, for instance event handling, results management, a SQL generator and a PDF report engine, as well as JDBC extensions for popular databases. The application logics can either be written in Java or in Basic, and a pre-compiler will convert the program – the final result is always designed to be a pure Java application that is executable under Windows, Linux and on a Mac without further adjustments.

XDEV 2 is available to download from the XDEV web site, following registration. It appears that, at the time of writing, the company has yet to update its English language web site and full details of XDEV 2 are only available on the German language site.

See also:

• Update XDEV 2.6 ab sofort verfügbar, German language XDEV 2.6 community edition release announcement.
• openXDEV.org, the German language XDEV Open Source Community.
• XDEV Software Corp., the German Language XDEV web site.

(crve)