Return of some useful plugins in Netbeans6.9

The introduction of Netbeans6.8 was a mixed blessing. Its support for JSF2.0 and ease of development at various-fronts is indeed praiseworthy but the downside was that we lost many useful plugins including visual web tool for JSF development, UML editor, XML schema editor etc. The howls of anguish were widespread. Sun justified it on the basis of instability of some of the tools and the strategic need to marshal resources on winning fronts. Well, Netbeans6.9 early release have some of these back. It indeed is a good news for champions of these tools but it leaves the question answered on the future direction of these tools in the hands of Oracle. The departure of Sun's CEO Jonathan Schwartz, the chief open source officer Simon Phipps and Java technology evangelist Sang Shin (whose javapassion.com was a useful tool for learning various Java technologies) is indicative of the winds of change. Are these back because of the transitional uncertainties? Whatever the reason, enjoy while they are available.

Many know how to add a new plugin in Netbeans using Tools/Plugins/Available Plugins but fewer are certain of Tools/Plugins/Downloaded/Add Plugins which allows the .nbm (the Netbeans distribution files or Netbeans Modules files) to be incorporated in our 'User Installed Plugins) section. The latter option is the one you need to use if you are downloading a zip file from the Sun's site with the appropriate plugin and want to include it in your environment.

I recall an interview of Leo Apotheker (SAPS's ex-CEO) at Charlie Rose last year where he surmised that SAP may even get in the business of producing hardware devices. The rationale was that the software could easily integrate into remotely monitoring utilities meters and other devices and as BI Accelerator shows that the marriage is inevitable in many cases. Whilst there is feverish speculation on the direction of Java, MySql, OpenOffice etc under the aegis of Oracle, it may well be that it is the hardware/software marriage which underpins the acquisition. But it is hard to remain sanguine about these technologies future under a profit-driven acquisitor like Oracle. The Netbeans tools mentioned above may have gained temporary life while Oracle rationalises their product portfolio. So let us temporarily enjoy their availability whilst there are transitional uncertainties.