Ancient mythology gives us a mythical bird associated with the Egyptian sun-god Re and the Greek Phoibos (Apollo). According to the Greeks the Phoenix lived in Arabia, near a cool well. Each morning at dawn, it would bathe in the water and sing such a beautiful song that the sun-god would stop his chariot to listen.

When it felt its death approaching (every few hundred years), the Phoenix would build a nest of aromatic wood, and self-immolate. From its ashes a new phoenix would spring forth. Or so goes the vision.

Thanks for indulging that brief digression. It's just that as I set about reviewing VisualAge for Java, it struck me that no company in the Information Age merits the title of Phoenix more than IBM. Just a couple of years ago they were down and all but out of the software devlopment mainstream. But look at them rise up today. And the fuel feeding the fires on which IBM ascends is certainly Java. Now the largest Java development house in the world, Big Blue has thrown its full weight behind the Java Beans component model. This is particularly evident when using the newest member of their VisualAge line of object-oriented development tools.

I have been using VisualAge for Java for about a month now. In this review I will tell you why it is becoming my main Java development environment, and also what I think IBM needs to do to liberate their product to reach its significant potential.

Make it so, Mr. Data

Let's install this thing and see what we get. Load the CD and up pops the installation program. I choose to do a typical install and let the program install using all of the defaults. This product has a number of pieces that it installs. To wit:

Java IDE	This is the environment you develop in. Subsystems include the basic Workbench, the Visual Composition Editor (to develop programs visually), the Repository Explorer (the interface into the repository), the Debugger, the Scrapbook (a place to try out code), Breakpoints (where you manage your debugging breakpoints), the Console (to display standard output) and the Log (to display messages and warnings)
Enterprise Access Builders	These are used to build JDBC interfaces to enterprise data managed by database servers such as DB2, for connecting your Java apps to enterprise transactions (potentially under CICS management), or for building RMI or C++ interfaces to other application servers
Search Server	The engine that supports navigation of VisualAge's HTML-based Help and online documentation.

Now consider the resource requirements for each of these pieces, as listed on the VisualAge for Java Web Site. Like other tools in this space IBM offers the product in three editions.

	Entry	Professional	Enterprise
Hardware Requirements	Intel Pentium Processor	Intel Pentium Processor	Intel Pentium Processor
	32 MB RAM (48MB recommended)	32 MB RAM (48MB recommended)	48 MB RAM (64MB recommended)
	Hard Disk Space Requirements - 45 MB for the tool, toolkit, samples - 30 MB swap / paging space minimum	Hard Disk Space Requirements - 45 MB for the tool, toolkit, samples - 25 MB for all documentation1 - 30 MB swap / paging space minimum	Hard Disk Space Requirements - 45 MB for the tool, toolkit, samples - 30 MB for the Enterprise Access Builders - 30 MB for all documentation 1 - 40 MB swap / paging space minimum
	CD-ROM drive	CD-ROM drive	CD-ROM drive
	Mouse or pointing device	Mouse or pointing device	Mouse or pointing device
	SVGA, 800 x 600 (1024 x 768 recommended)	SVGA, 800 x 600 (1024 x 768 recommended)	SVGA, 800 x 600 (1024 x 768 recommended)
Software Requirements	OS/2 Warp Version 4 or Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0 or later	OS/2 Warp Version 4 or Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0 or later	OS/2 Warp Version 4 or Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0 or later
Software Prerequisites	- A frames capable browser to access the HTML-based help and Web documentation such as:   - Netscape Navigator Version 3.02 or later   - Internet Explorer Version 3.0 or later - TCP/IP communication protocol	- A frames capable browser to access the HTML-based help and Web documentation such as:   - Netscape Navigator Version 3.02 or later   - Internet Explorer Version 3.0 or later - TCP/IP communication protocol	- A frames capable browser to access the HTML-based help and Web documentation such as:   - Netscape Navigator Version 3.02 or later   - Internet Explorer Version 3.0 or later - TCP/IP communication protocol
Supported Languages (Levels)	Java Developers Kit Version 1.12 Java-enabled Browsers with JDK 1.1 Support	Java Developers Kit Version 1.12 Java-enabled Browsers with JDK 1.1 Support	Java Developers Kit Version 1.12 Java-enabled Browsers with JDK 1.1 Support

¹ The disk space consumed on a FAT file system depends on hard disk size and partitioning.
² VisualAge for Java Version 1.0 supports JDK 1.1 with the following exceptions:
Inner classes and the following Java Native Interface APIs (DefineClass, ExceptionDescribe, FatalError, RegisterNatives, UnregisterNatives, MonitorEnter, MonitorExit, and GetJavaVM)

I reviewed the Enterprise Edition, possessed by far of the largest system requirements. The reason I explicated the foregoing resource requirements at such length is that they appear to me to be malarkey.

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