NetBeans 6.5 beta offers PHP improvements

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By Jeff Feinman

August 15, 2008 — Sun Microsystems has released the first beta of NetBeans 6.5, the latest version of its Java-based integrated development environment.

The NetBeans 6.5 beta adds PHP capabilities, including code completion and generators for MySQL database code. It also has the ability to do heredoc notation, which specifies string literals for source code in command line shells and programming languages such as Perl, PHP and Ruby.

Sun executives said the ability to use JavaScript, which was made available in NetBeans 6.1 earlier this year, has been improved to be more stable and intelligent. New Compile-On-Save and Deploy-On-Save options allow classes to be recompiled manually and reloaded in the NetBeans debugger or redeployed into a Java EE application server.

“The NetBeans IDE 6.5 beta release provides several new features and enhancements, such as a new IDE-wide QuickSearch shortcut, a more user-friendly interface and automatic Compile-On-Save,” the NetBeans.org Web site said of the beta.

NetBeans 6.5 has improved interoperability with the Java Persistence API, JavaServer Faces and the Spring Framework. NetBeans users can create RESTful Web services from database tables and can drag SaaS offerings into PHP files. Improvements have been made to the SQL Editor in code completion and save and recall queries.

Sun also said there are new features for Groovy and Ruby. NetBeans 6.5 allows the development of pure Groovy applications, and users can open existing Grails applications without having to add metadata. For Rails and Ruby, there is a new Test Runner interface for displaying test results. Improvements have been made to Rake Runner, and Ruby projects can accept Java Virtual Machine options from the command line.

According to Sun, NetBeans 6.5 has been tested with application servers such as Sun’s Java System Application Server, Apache Tomcat, the GlassFish Enterprise Server, IBM WebSphere and JBoss.

Changes have also been made to the layout of the main menu and windows in NetBeans 6.5, Sun said. “The tasks window is now visible by default. Debugger windows, Output window, Tasks window and other windows, which show up in the same place as Output, have changed their position,” said the NetBeans Web site.

The NetBeans open-source IDE is available for Linux, Mac OS, Solaris and Windows. It has an application platform for developing Web, desktop and mobile applications using the Java platform, C/C++, Groovy, JavaScript, PHP and Ruby. It offers third-party plug-ins, including a Demo Project Factory Sample, an Editor Code Completion Sample and an NW Script plug-in.

Related Search Term(s): Java, PHP, Sun

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