Hi all,

This is my last blog entry for the year 2008. I've blogged 227 times this year, about a variety of topics (mostly NetBeans). I enjoy blogging. It puts me in touch with the community, making me much more approachable by community members.

2008 was a great year. Here is a sample of what I was able to witness or take part in (I've tried to put them in chronological order):

• Sun's acquisition of MySQL
• NetBeans switching from CVS to Mercurial
• Sun presentations in Second Life
• 100th NetBeans Community Docs contribution
• The release of NetBeans 6.0.1
• The creation of a NetBeans Community Docs blog
• New Woodstock components in the NB Palette
• My visit to St. Petersburg, Russia
• Big Database changes in NetBeans IDE (ongoing)
• The release of NetBeans 6.1
• A new Contribution Coordinator for NetBeans …

Hi all,

As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, big changes are underway to the database connection connection node in NetBeans 7.0. If you look at the image above, you'll see what I mean. In the connection that is highlighted, no schema was selected when the connection was made, thus "default" is displayed as the schema.

When the schema is default, all schemas are displayed under the connection node when it is expanded. When you expand the schema, you'll see a familiar sight: the Tables, Views, and Procedures folders.

Individual database connections are also displayed as separate nodes below, even with default schemas.

Be sure to stay tuned for changes.

Happy Holidays!

--James

We had discussions about the value of doing SQL completion in PHP. The argument was that developers normally just write and test their queries in a "real" SQL editor (which comes with completion already), and then cut-and-paste into their PHP code. So why do all the work to do completion in the PHP editor? I even asked my Dear Readers for their thoughts on this. It was generally positive, so we're plugging ahead.

But the comments and tweets I've seen since Petr blogged about SQL completion in PHP are very encouraging that we're on the right path...

Here are some sample tweets - I love the "scribbling on the wall" nature of tweets. It's almost like being in a bathroom stall :)

…

Adam Myatt's uncovered some stuff from our team wiki and our mailing list that I wasn't prepared to talk about publicly (well, more publicly) yet because it hasn't been built yet. You know, I'll believe it when I see it.

But, yes, there is a new New Connection dialog planned with a Test Connection feature. It will also have a "Automatically Reconnect on NB Restart" checkbox that I know I will love to have.

Note that what he's showing is a wireframe/mockup and not the actual dialog. Point taken about the current dialog being too wide, we'll see what we can do about that.

And yes, we are looking at making a help plugin with full MySQL docs and also making MySQL documentation available in code completion for MySQL functions (to start, maybe keywords later), both in the PHP editor and the SQL editor. If we get this to work, it will be very cool

You may or may not know that you can edit result sets executed from a SQL editor in NetBeans.

Now available in the nightly builds, when editing a date field, just click on the drop-down arrow and you get a nice date picker. This is so much nicer than trying to enter in the date by hand.

All this cool data entry functionality is coming from Ahimanikya Satapathy's team in Bangalore. They are a completely separate team here at Sun - they don't even have the same VP as we do. His team is part of the group that delivers Sun's Java CAPS (Composite Application Platform Suite). This suite provides SOA and data integration services for Sun customers. It's been great working with them, a …

In a way, it's embarassing we didn't always do this, but now you can see all the schemas in your database from your connection. Your default schema is in bold. Available in the nightly builds.

This isn't quite working yet for MySQL, but should be fixed in the next few days... We'll also be fixing the dialog for creating a new connection so you don't have to specify the schema any more, we'll just use the default given by the database. If you want to switch your default, just right-click on a schema and say "Set As Default" That'll be nice...

Hey,

Today, NetBeans Team announcing a joint effort between NetBeans and strategic partner ICEsoft to offer support for Woodstock users. With the latest ICEfaces-NetBeans Plugin, Woodstock users will be able to migrate and maintain their existing projects, and ICEfaces has provided a detailed porting guide to explain the process.

For more details and resources, check out this News Item;

http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/NewsItemView?newsItemID=1324

Happy NetBeaning!

Hi all,

Are you aware of the fact that you can use NetBeans IDE for programming with Python? It's still early in the game, but it's true. We've already set up a quick tutorial for Python at http://wiki.netbeans.org/NetBeansPythonTutorial.

As mentioned, it's still early, but efforts are already underway to provide tutorials that feature the following:

• Python and Django
• Database Interaction (SQLAlchemy, mysqldb)
• GUI programming (wxPython, pyGTK)
• PyQT4

I'll let you know more as the story develops.

Cheers!

--James

Hi all,

Today I'd like to continue a blog series in which I highlight Web application tutorials for NetBeans 6.5. A few changes have been made to tutorials, so be sure to check them out again.

This seventeenth entry in the series will cover the tutorial, Connecting to a MySQL Database.

This document demonstrates how to set up a connection to a MySQL database from NetBeans IDE 6.5. Once connected, you can begin working with MySQL in the IDE's Database Explorer by creating new databases and tables, populating tables with data, and running SQL queries on database structures and content. This tutorial is designed for beginners with a basic understanding of database management, who want to apply their knowledge to working with MySQL in NetBeans IDE.

This is great for learning how NetBeans and MySQL can be used together.

…

A nice tutorial showing you the basics of how to set up a MySQL connection and work with a MySQL database using NetBeans 6.5

http://www.netbeans.org/kb/docs/ide/mysql.html