John W Baker's Weblog

The new NetBeans 6.5 has so many new features, it's amazing.  See the New and Noteworthy page for all the features ... including SQL History and the MySQL features. 

The new PHP support is also really good.  Here's more on the NetBeans database and PHP features.

After downloading 6.5, make sure to get the latest patches.  Start NetBeans then choose the Help->Check for Updates menuitem.

A new database feature in NetBeans 6.5 is the ability to save and
reuse SQL statements that have been executed. A dialog listing SQL
statements along with the date executed can be opened from the SQL
Editor by right-clicking within the editor and choosing SQL History or
clicking an image button for SQL History in the SQL Editor toolbar.

To reuse previously executed SQL statements, in the SQL History
dialog, select an SQL statement then click the Insert button, or
double-click on the SQL History. SQL is inserted at the location of the
editor cursor.

In order to fit the SQL within the width allocated in the dialog,
SQL has been truncated. To see the entire SQL, mouse over the SQL and a
tooltip opens displaying the entire SQL statement.

Initially, the order of SQL displayed is descending by date, so the
most recently executed statement appears first. However, if there are
many statements listed, then the order can be changed.
To reverse the order by date, click the header of the Date Executed column. Or, to sort the SQL alphabetically, click on the SQL Executed column header.

To search for a string in the list of SQL, type the string in the Matching SQL text field.

To list only the SQL executed only for a given database connection, select the connection from the Connection dropdown.

If you want to limit the number of SQL statements to save, enter a
number (less than or equal to 10,000) and click Apply. To remove all
statements set the limit to 0, click Apply. Remember to reset the
number to a number greater than 0 so statements can be saved again.

Next, I'll use the MySQL database and show how to create a Trip table in the Sakila database.

Requirements

1. MySQL installed and started
   


2. Sakila plugin installed
   

Steps

1. We'll create the Sakila sample database.
   


2. In Services, right-click on the MySQL node and choose create table. In the Create Table dialog, select sakila.
   


3. Repeat to create the travel database
   


4. In Services, select the Travel connection, jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/travel right-click and choose Execute Command - SQL Editor opens
   


5. Open SQL History by right-clicking on the SQL Editor and choose SQL History
   


6. The SQL History dialog lists the SQL that was executed to create the sample databases and insert records. (for screenshot, see attached file, after_creating_tables.png)









7. Next we'll add the trip table from the travel database to the sakila database
   


8. In SQL History, select the Connection dropdown and choose the connection for Travel
   


9. In the Matching SQL textfield, mis-type the string, creeate







10. Edit the match string. Position the cursor at the end of the string, type the backspace key and correct the spelling to create table travel.trip


11. Select the create statement for the Trip table then click the
    Insert button. SQL is inserted in the SQL Editor at the location of the
    cursor.
    


12. Replace the string in the Matching SQL textfield with, INSERT INTO TRAVEL.TRIP . Note, the match string is case insensitive.




13. Select one insert statement (for the trip table), then click
    the Insert button or double-click. Repeat inserting a few more
    statements
    


14. Close SQL History
    


15. From the main menu choose Edit->Replace and replace all instances of the string, travel with sakila

Screenshot



16. In the SQL Editor, choose the connection for Sakila, jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/sakila , then click the Green arrow to execute the SQL inserted.
    


17. To see that a table was added, in Services, expand the sakila
    connection right-click on the Tables node, choose Refresh and see that
    the trip table has been created.
    

1. Reopen SQL History. You can see the statements that were just executed to create the sakila.trip table
   


2. To list statements alphabetically, click on the SQL Executed header. Note, the first sort is reverse-alphabetical.


3. Clicking the SQL Executed header again will sort the SQL in alphabetical order.
   


4. And to list the statements by date, in reverse order, with the latest date executed appearing as the first item, click on the Date Executed header


5. Next, let's reset SQL History using the Number of SQL statements to Save field by setting the value to 5 and click Apply.







6. Close SQL History
   


7. Try to execute a statement, for the MySQL sakila connection, jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/sakila, right-click and choose Execute Statement


8. In the SQL Editor, type, select * from sakila.trip

• Cannot remove database table column from action


• SQL History: vertical resize doesn't resize all comp
  


• SQL History: only one item inserted into document


• SQL History: if running NB in multiple locales the history file cannot be parsed
  

• SQL History: Dialog shouldn't be modal

Don't mess with scientists

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_pl78

In these tough economic times, people are willing to do just about anything for a buck ...

 
When creating Visual JSF projects in NetBeans 6.0 (and 6.1) to connect to and execute database operations from a JSF application a data source is created by dragging and dropping a database table to the Design view and right on top of a JSF component.  This creates a JSF binding to the component.  By default the data source name generated is [schema name]_[database product name].  If you're using MySQL then the table name is used instead of the schema name.  To see the name generated for your database connection, for your project in the Projects window, expand the Data Source References node.

 If you want to choose the data source name generated then an option has been added.  Open the Options dialog from the Tools main menu.  Next click the Miscellaneous icon at the top and then click the Visual Web tab.  Next, check the Prompt for Data Source Name checkbox.  

From now on when you drag and drop a database table onto the Design view, a dialog will open allowing you to enter the name of your liking. 

Today, I posted the solution (a sample project) for the NetBeans 6.0/6.1 Inserts Updates Deletes tutorial using MySQL.  I'll be posting solutions for other databases on this page.

This tutorial is a JSF application that demonstrates basic CRUD (create, read, update delete) operations on a database.
 

In this entry, I'll explain how to create a simple Visual Web  Java EE 5 application that displays CLOB values from an Oracle database in a Table component.  Here is the supported Oracle driver information for Visual Web

NetBeans Visual Web components support many types of converters to convert data types to String for displaying values in components (Table, StaticText, Dropdown List, ..).

There are however, these in-the-box converters do not support all types, such as database LOB fields (CLOB, BLOB (not blog), BFILE) .  For these, a custom converter is required.

Here is a sample converter that converts a CLOB to a String.    To use this converter with a JSF component, a bean property along with an accessor method must be created to instantiate the converter class*. 

    private Converter myClob = new ClobConverter();

    public Converter getMyClob() {

        return myClob;

    }  

Next, in the JSP source where the component is defined, the converter is set using JSF Expression Language statement to retrieve the value from the property of the bean class, myClob.

 <webuijsf:staticText binding="#{Page1.staticText7}" converter="#{Page1.myClob}" id="staticText7" text="#{currentRow.value['CLOB_COL']}"/> 

Next, converter must be registered in the faces-config.xml file:

 <faces-config version="1.2" 

    xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" 

    xmlnssi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 

    xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-facesconfig_1_2.xsd">



    <converter>

        <converter-id>ClobConverter</converter-id>

        <converter-class>

            webapplication8.ClobConverter

        </converter-class>

    </converter>

    <managed-bean>

        <managed-bean-name>SessionBean1</managed-bean-name>

        <managed-bean-class>webapplication8.SessionBean1</managed-bean-class>

        <managed-bean-scope>session</managed-bean-scope>

    </managed-bean>

    <managed-bean>

        <managed-bean-name>Page1</managed-bean-name>

        <managed-bean-class>webapplication8.Page1</managed-bean-class>

        <managed-bean-scope>request</managed-bean-scope>

    </managed-bean>


...


</faces-config> 

Next setup the database.  You can use the pre-registered Derby connection, travel on TRAVEL.

Select this connection, right-click and choose Connect... then again, right-click then choose Execute Command...  and paste the following SQL into the SQL Editor, then click the smaller Green arrow in the toolbar of the SQL Editor.  Note the SQL below is for Oracle.  I can provide the SQL for other databases at the end of this blog entry.

CREATE TABLE clob_table (

    id NUMBER PRIMARY KEY, 

    text VARCHAR(30),

    clob_col CLOB

);



INSERT INTO clob_Table VALUES (0, 'RECORD 0', 'COMMENT FOR RECORD 0');

INSERT INTO clob_Table VALUES (1, 'RECORD 1', 'COMMENT FOR RECORD 1');

INSERT INTO clob_Table VALUES (2, 'RECORD 2', 'COMMENT FOR RECORD 2');

INSERT INTO clob_Table VALUES (3, 'RECORD 3', 'COMMENT FOR RECORD 3');

Create a new Web Application using the Visual JSF Framework.  Then, from the Palette, drag and drop a Table component onto the Designer surface.  Next, from the Services tab, expand the travel on TRAVEL connection and drag and drop a CLOB_TABLE onto the Table component (the outline of the component will turn blue)

In order to use this project, modify the setup/sun-resources.xml file for your environment.
Also add the Oracle JDBC driver to the project.

1) Create a new Library in NetBeans (Tools->Libraries) I created a new library named Oracle
add odbc14.jar

2) In the web application, right-click on the project node and select Properties then select Libraries
and add the Oracle library

Next, change from the Design view to the JSP source view and if you haven't already, add the converter option to the StaticText component that is bound to CLOB_COL

    <webuijsf:tableColumn binding="#{Page1.tableColumn6}" headerText="CLOB_COL" id="tableColumn6" sort="CLOB_COL">

       <webuijsf:staticText binding="#{Page1.staticText7}" converter="#{Page1.myClob}" id="staticText7" text="#{currentRow.value['CLOB_COL']}"/>

    </webuijsf:tableColumn> 

And make sure the converter is registered in the faces-config as above.

Finally, you can execute the application.  Your browser should render the Table component as shown in the screenshot.  If the page is blank then in NetBeans, click on the the Output tab at the bottom and then the Glassfish tab.  Scroll to the bottom to check the error.

I'll attach a sample project for reference.

Sample project that connects to Oracle.
To resolve project errors, edit the sun-resources.xml and replace the database settings with your Oracle settings.

Well, it's been awhile.  I've been busy implementing new database features for the Visual Web framework for NetBeans 6.0 .  We're getting close to releasing a Beta.  There might be another Beta release to try to fix some bugs found by Customers.  In this entry (an update to Data sources in Visual Web Pack)I'll discuss the feature to help recover or resolve database connections.   Since database connection references are stored in the userdir, if a project is moved from one system to another or a user deletes their userdir the references are also deleted.  For Visual Web projects that use databases, connections must be available and known to NetBeans.  The feature described below helps a user restore database connection references.

 
Now that integration of database functionality has been more tightly integrated since 5.5, I had to re-do this feature.  There is a little bit of documentation in inline help for 5.5.  Hopefully this entry explains this feature better.

A visualweb project that contains database rowset bindings has an associated datasource for each rowset bundled in the project.
If a project is moved to another machine or the userdir was deleted (drivers and connections are lost) then at design-time, bindings to the
rowsets will fail such that when a visualweb page is opened, a Component Error window opens instead of the expected page design.
Since visualweb requires live connections to the database at design-time, each project data source must have a corresponding connection, this Resolve Broken Data Sources will help the user restore the driver and or connection.

Also, if a project is migrated from Java Studio Creator 2 then
the project datasources are restored within the project (the driver and connection are migrated when migrating the userdir settings from Creator 2)

In Creator 2, users could create data sources using the Data Sources node in the Server Navigator. Also, there was a facility to import/export datasources used by the IDE (by saving datasources used a config file) when migrating projects, whether from release to release or machine to machine.

 
In VWP 5.5, the Server Navigator was removed for the sake of redundancy with the Services window. The Services window is where Application Servers, Database connections and EJB clients are registered.

 
Feature summary

This feature's purpose is to detect when database connections, needed by a visualweb database project, have not been registered in the Services pane and to badge the Data Source References node, add an action to the Data Source References node and add a dialog to help guide a user to register the database connections needed.
Once the connections have been registered, the datasources can be registered in the project and server specific info added to the project (setup folder with connection pool configurations).

This feature will also be used by the  User settings migration feature</a> for 6.0

This feature is similar to the 5.5. There will be a new Services palette, but only database connections will be listed, not data sources. Data sources will have to be resolved project by project, same as 5.5. See <a href="http://www.netbeans.org/kb/55/vwp-migration.html">

Resolving a Data Source </a>Migrating a project can be defined as :

• opening a Creator 2 or VWP 5.5 project
  
• opening a VW 6 project on another computer which doesn't have the equivalent database driver and connections registered

This feature will perform the following:

1. Listen for all projects opened in the IDE
   
2. For each project, check if the project contains any datasources. If the project contains a datasource, retrieve the data sources from the project and check to see if connections for each data source have been registered.
   
3. Check for an existing connection. If connection is missing then badge the Data Source Reference(s) node, post an Alert dialog and add a Resolve Data Source(s) action
   
4. If a matching connection has been registered and the project's data sources have not been updated then the project's datasources will be automatically updated and a message is printed in the Output window, "Data Sources have been resolved"
   
5. If connections and/or driver needed by the project have not been registered, the Project and Data Source References node will be badged and a Resolve Data Source(s) action will be added. Choosing this action will open a Resolve Data Source(s) dialog that lists the missing datasources.  When the user selects the action on the Project node, Resolve Data Source(s) clicks to Resolve then the Add Connection dialog opens where the user can register a driver and connection for the data source
   

Once the datasources have been resolved, remove the Resolve Data Source(s) context menu and print a message to the Output window to inform the user that the Data Sources have been resolved

More info
There will be child node under Data Source References, for each data source in the project, (see Travel child node in (figure 1) . The child data source node will not have an action.

Only those data sources which don't have a corresponding Database Connection will be listed in the Resolve Data Source(s) dialog. If a child data source node has a corresponding connection then it won't be badged.

For example, if the project has another data source, named Foo and there is a database connection for Foo in the Services tab then Foo will appear as a child of the Data Source References node, but it won't have a badge (red square in top right corner of the image). Also, Foo will not be listed in the Resolve Data Source(s) dialog.

Use cases

Use Case A. User has a project developed in Java Studio Creator 2 or VWP 5.5 that uses rowsets - pages with components bound to rowsets and wants to import this project in NetBeans 5.5.

Use Case B. User has developed a new Visual Web application that contains a rowsets.  If another user wants to use this project or the developer has removed the userdir then the data sources will not be found

Here's the steps required for both use cases to resolve missing data connections:

1. Open the project
   
2. If the project has data sources for which there is no corresponding database connection in the Runtime window, the Data Source References node icon will be badged (visible after expanding the project node). An alert dialog opens to inform the user that the project has errors and provides instructions on how to resolve the data source problem.
   
   
   (Figure 1)
   
   
3. A context menuitem is added to the Project node, Resolve Database Problem. Selecting this context menuitem will open a dialog listing the missing data sources (for which there is no corresponding Database connection)
   Note: Figure 2 shows the action on the Data Source References node, where the action, Resolve Database Problem, is on the Project's node
   
   
   (figure 2)
   
   
   (figure 3)
   
   
4. To resolve a database connection to another database server, select the datasource in the Resolve Datasource(s) dialog then click the Add Database Connection button and the Add Database Connection dialog will open.
   
   
   (figure 4)
   
   
5. If the driver has not been added then click the dropdown and choose New Driver, otherwise choose the appropriate driver.
6. Fill in all fields. If any field is entered incorrectly, a connection error dialog will open
   # After clicking OK, a new JDBC Driver node is added to the Runtime|Databases|Drivers node (if it had not been previously registered)and a new connection is added to the Runtime|Databases|Connections node
   # If the page containing the components bound to rowset(s) is open, refreshing the page will restore the connections (or clicking the Continue button in the Component Error window)
   
7. For databases used besides Java DB then JDBC drivers the user is required to manually copy the drivers to the Glassfish lib directory in order to execute the application
   
8. If Glassfish is the target server, then this feature will add the server specific files to the project, if needed.

   As a result, the project's pages that have components that bind to rowsets will rebind successfully, automagically and the project can be deployed successfully.

   Gotchas

   If a user cleans up the App Server by deleting domain1 or removing connections then by choosing to Resolve Data Sources, the connection resources are added to the project so it can be deployed successfully.
   

Parameters for connecting to the Travel database

• User ID = travel
• Password = travel
• Database URL = jdbc:derby://localhost:1527/travel 
  
  

NetBeans 5.5 Visual Web Pack released

Available free download is the Visual Web Pack.

After installing NetBeans 5.5 then this pack can be installed for visual drag and drop JavaServer Faces
components with support for binding to Databases, Web Services, Data Providers and Java Persistence
Entity Classes.

Links

• NetBeans 5.5 download


• Visual Web Pack download


• Visual Web Pack homepage


• Introduction to Visual Web Pack audio-visual webinar **


• Migration Guide for Java Studio Creator 2 users


• Visual Web Pack FAQs


• Simplifying Data Access using Netbeans Visual Web Pack, audio-visual webinar by Jim and I *


• NetBeans UserForum (link to Nabble interface)- when posting, suggest to include "VWP" in the subject line
  
• Other NetBeans 5.5 packs

* Jim and I gave a brief introduction to Simplifying Data Access using NetBeans 5.5 and Visual Web
Pack. We were still busy fixing bugs so we didn't have much time to prepare, but still there's some
useful info.

** Craig gave a demo on how to create Java Persistence Architecture (JPA) web applications
using Visual Web Pack

Check it out and let us know what you think, by posting to the NetBeans UserForum.
Thanks!

Background

In VWP, data sources are generated when a database table is dragged and dropped onto a VWP Page or component in a VWP Page (e.g. Page1 that is created when creating a new Visual Web application)

The name of the data source is generated automatically. To see the name of the data source generated, in the Outline, expand the SessionBean (or the bean in which the database table was dropped) and select a rowset node.  Then check the Properties window for the data source property for the name.

Also, JDBC resources are created in the project under the setup folder. To view the resources for a project, with the project opened, switch to the Files tab and expand the setup folder then open the resources file. Resource files will have "extra properties" such as the connection info - username, driver name, database port number, etc.

The data source name must match the JNDI name created in the Application Server JDBC Resources, otherwise,
when executing an application an HTTP 500 error will occur.

A missing data connection means that the data source was not found in the IDE's context.xml and/or no NetBeans database connection and corresponding JDBC Driver reference exists.

Here, I'll describe how to import a project from Creator 2, another Visual Web Pack installation or restored the userdir. For users of the Technology Preview release, see the notes below. Also for more info,
there is a migration document available

VWP Final Release Information

Changes in the final release

• There is a new Help topic for Data Source References. When the Data Source References node is selected, type the F1 key, or search Help
• The project node is no longer badged and project name label does not change to red if there are
  unresolved data source references. This change helps some with open-project-performance


• There is a new Data Source References node and a child node for each Data Source . Expand the project's node to view.


• The Resolve Database Problems context menu has been replaced by Resolve Data Sources context menu located on the Data Source References node.


• If a data source is missing then a badge is pinned to the node representing the data source that is missing

Importing a Creator 2 database project

• Open the project


• (VWP Technology Preview Only)Project node icon will be badged, in the Projects window


• Right-click and select Resolve Database Problem to open a dialog listing the missing database connection(s)



• By selecting a Data Source name then clicking the Add connection button, the Add Database Connection dialog will open. Note, a connection has been preconfigured for Java DB, presuming Glassfish has been registered and the IDE has been restarted. If the IDE was not restarted then the user is required to navigate to the location of derbyclient.jar (%GLASSFISH_INSTALL_PATH%\javadb\lib),select the jar and continue with the following steps


• If the data source to resolve is to a Java DB database then fill in the username, password, JDBC URL and select a validation table.
  
• example: parameters for connecting to the Travel database
  
  • User ID = travel
  
  
  • Password = travel
  
  
  • Database URL = jdbc:derby://localhost:1527/travel


• Next, click the Add button and you're done

• To resolve a database connection to another database server, the user can either click the Edit New
  button or from the Server Type dropdown select item to add a new server type and make the driver jar available. This will open the Edit Database Server Types dialog

Refresh action - new Context menu also on the Data Source References node. Choosing this action will check the status of the Data Sources in the project. This is useful if a Page hadn't been opened and data sources are missing then a badge will be added to the Data Source References node.

3. A project is opened and data sources have not been created in the context. Choosing to Resolve Data Source(s) adds data sources to the context, plus connection resources. If another project that uses the same data source is opened then previously, then select the Data Source References node, right-click and choose Resolve Data Source(s) . After a few seconds the data sources will be resolved and the project can be deployed

4. If a user cleans up the App Server by deleting domain1 or removing connections then by choosing to Resolve Data Sources, the connection resources are added to the project so it can be deployed successfully. After removing domain1 folder, use the command

ant -f setup.xml

to restore the user domain.

Notes

• Since Java DB is not bundled with VWP, when adding a new Connection, the user can navigate to the Derby installation diretory under Glassfish (javadb\lib) to add derbyclient.jar

---

Technology Preview Information

Importing a Creator 2 database project


1. User has a database project developed in Java Studio Creator 2 Update 1 and wants to import this project in VWP, or

2. User has developed a new Visual Web database application that contains a rowsets. (if another user wants to use this project or the developer has restored the userdir, then the data connections will not be found)

Here's the steps required for both use cases to resolve missing data connections.



• Open the project


• (VWP Technology Preview Only)Project node icon will be badged, in the Projects window



• Right-click and select Resolve Database Problem to open a dialog listing the missing database connection(s)



• By selecting a Data Source name then clicking the Add connection button, the Add Database Connection dialog will open. Note, a connection has been preconfigured for Java DB, presuming Glassfish has been registered and the IDE has been restarted. If the IDE was not restarted then the user is required to navigate to the location of derbyclient.jar (%GLASSFISH_INSTALL_PATH%\javadb\lib),select the jar and continue with the following steps


• If the data connection to resolve is to a Java DB database then fill in the username, password, JDBC URL and select a validation table.
  
• example: parameters for connecting to the Travel database
  
  • User ID = travel
  
  
  • Password = travel
  
  
  • Database URL = jdbc:derby://localhost:1527/travel


• Next, click the Add button and you're done

• To resolve a database connection to another database server, the user can either click the Edit New
  button or from the Server Type dropdown select item to add a new server type and make the driver jar available. This will open the Edit Database Server Types dialog

ant -f setup.xml

Notes

• Since Java DB is not bundled with VWP, when adding a new Connection, the user can navigate to the Derby installation diretory under Glassfish (javadb\lib) to add derbyclient.jar


• * Bug (this is fixed in the Final Release)- if more than one project is opened and they use the same data source then data sources can be resolved for only the first project.


• To resolve data sources for each project




1. Exit NetBeans


2. Edit the context.xml file in the userdir (e.g. C:\Documents and Settings\< user >\.netbeans\5.5\context.xml and remove the entry surrounded by <object> </object> corresponding to the data source just added


3. Restart NetBeans and then resolve the data sources for the other project

To rename a data source and JNDI name. The Data Source created in Visual Web Pack (VWP) corresponds to
the JNDI setting on the application server:

Tomcat workaround
Glassfish workaround

Tomcat workaround
(Workaround provided by a Customer, much appreciated)

How to rename a datasource to Ciyela.

1. Define the connection in Runtime > database > New Connection.
2. Stop IDE.
3. Edit context.xml, change

  from:

    <object name="dataSource" class="com.sun.rave.sql.DesignTimeDataSource">

  To:

     <object name="Ciyela" class="com.sun.rave.sql.DesignTimeDataSource">

At this point I can add RowSets and providers but VWP don't deploy
connection, just adds the resource reference. The steps to run the
application on bundled Tomcat are:

1. Stop Tomcat.
2. Edit the "ide" user password in $USER_HOME/.netbeans/5.5/apache-tomcat-5.5.17_base/conf/tomcat-users.xml
3. Edit the password used by IDE to connect to Tomcat: Runtime > Servers > Bundled Tomcat > Properties > Connection > Password.
4. Copy database's jar (Firebird in my case) to $NET_BEANS_HOME/enterprise3/apache-tomcat-5.5.17/common/lib
5. Start Tomcat.
6. Open admin console: Runtime > Servers > Bundled Tomcat > View Admin Console.
7. Define the data source.
8. Run the application.

Glassfish workaround
1) Switch to the Runtime tab, expand the Servers and delete the JDBC Resources and Connection pools.

(Steps 2-5 below apply to a single project and must be done for each project
that is to use a new JNDI name)

2) In the project's directory, edit SessionBean1.java and rename the data source name in the _init() method

e.g. edit

tripRowSet.setDataSourceName("java:comp/env/jdbc/cpsDataSource");

3) Open the

setup/jdbc_dataSource.sun-resource 

4) Edit

web/WEB-INF/web.xml 

web/WEB-INF/sun-web.xml 

object name ... 

Sample Database support in Visual Web Pack for NetBeans 5.5

Visual Web Pack includes a sample database, named Travel

Travel is installed automatically after Java DB is registered in the IDE.
Once Java DB is registered, a restart of the IDE is required.

If the NetBeans userdir is deleted then the same as above applies.

Java DB can be registered by either installing Sun Java System Application Server 9 (Glassfish)
or installing manually.

Java DB (Derby) can be registered by opening Tools->Options - Advanced - IDE Configuration - Server and External Tool Settings - Java DB Database
Here the installation of Derby is specified along with the path where databases are created (default location is $HOME/.netbeans-derby)

After restarting NetBeans, in the Runtime tab there will be a new connection for Travel.

More info:

To use the Travel database in a Visual Web Pack application, in the Runtime tab, open the context menu for the connection
jdbc:derby://localhost:1527/travel [travel on TRAVEL] then choose connect.
A login dialog will open - travel is the password

After the connection is successful, create a new Visual Web Pack project and back in the Runtime tab, expand the Travel connection node, Table
then click on a table and drag and drop the table to the Design view or on top of a JSF component in the Design view.

When a table is dropped, a dataprovider instance is created in the Page1 bean class and a JSF binding expression is generated in the JSP source.
To see bindings, either select a component and the Properties window will reflect the bindings. Alternatively, right-click on the component
and choose Property Bindings context menu.

Note, that when exiting NetBeans, Java DB and SJSAS are shut down. After restarting NetBeans, also
start Java DB, otherwise, the Component Error page will open. If this page opens then start Java DB
then click the Refresh button located at the top of the Design page (the button with 2 squiggly
arrows pointing in opposite directions)

If the tables and or data are lost for Travel, to restore the databases, a SQL script is included.
Choose File->Open and navigate to the installation directory of NetBeans 5.5 and open rave2.0/startup/samples/create-Travel-derby.sql
The SQL editor will open. Then make sure to select the Travel connection from the dropdown in the editor (maximize NetBeans if the dropdown is not
visible) then click the small green arrow adjacent to the connection dropdown. The Travel tables and data will be restored.

Look for VWP tutorials coming soon or see the Creator 2 Tutorials, some are still applicable to the Visual Web Pack.
For more info on Creator 2 to Visual Web Pack, see Winston Prakash's blog

Lots of changes this year, for me and for Sun tools.
We've release a Technology Preview of the Visual Web Pack that is plugged into NetBeans 5.5

For me, see the before and after pictures, below

1) Sun Java Studio Creator 2 -> NetBeans 5.5 Visual Web Pack TP

2) Quality Assurance Engineer -> Database Engineer on NetBeans 5.5 Visual Web Pack

no more Dashboard from me

Exciting stuff the product change in 1) above, now no more questions ( I hope ) about what's the difference between NetBeans and Creator !
Also no more filing showstopper bugs from me and now I have clearance to enter the Rave room

I'm currently responsible for the Sample Database creation, Data Sources, Importing Creator 2 projects, JPA and sharing responsibilties
for other database features.

Here's the before (QA Engineer) and after (Database Developer) pictures

Before

Thanks to a couple of the Creator Divas, they made a cape and mask, when I used to be Dashboy

After

As recently announced, Sun now allows Customers to rate Sun's products.

Ratings now include Sun Java Studio Creator. If you have some experience with
using Creator, then please write a review

But, before you do, please update Creator with the latest Performance patches.
Just last week a patch was made available which fixes performance issues at
designtime. Notice the first ratings were given prior to the Performance patch.

If you haven't tried Creator, please download, try it out and please let us know what you think by writing a review. Thank you!