Visual Café Database Edition : Java Glossary

Visual Café started out at Symantec. Then Symantec sold it to Webgain. Webgain went belly up and sold it to TogetherSoft. Then TogetherSoft sold it to Borland. Borland seem to have dropped it entirely. They appear to have bought it just to kill any possible competition with JBuilder. Your best bet now to get a copy of Visual Café would be look on eBay.

Here are some hints on using Visual Café Database Development Edition. The online help documentation is out of date and downright erroneous. Much of this material will also apply to Visual Café, Visual Café Pro edition and Visual Café 1.0.

Preparing JavaBeans

Installing a JavaBean Component In the Library

1. You must add it from a class file to the library.
2. You must add it to the toolbar from the library.

The tools for adding and deleting components and groups from the library and toolbar are chaotic. I am being charitable. But worse, they are improperly documented. Here is how you actually do these procedures.

• To add a group to the library, according to help, you are supposed to click Insert Group. This is always grayed out so I don’t think this is possible. (That button gives the impression it means adding a whole group of components to the project so this menu item shoud properly be labeled Insert Group in Library). However, I discovered that you could add a group in the Library by clicking Window, Component Library, right click, add group. Then you left click twice slowly! — not double click, on the new folder group created and rename it.Intuitive user interface eh?
• To remove a group from the library, click Window, Component library. Click on the offending group. Hit DEL. This will rename it to nothing. Click away from the group. Click back and hit DEL again. This will finally kill it. There is no right click delete/rename support.I bet it would take you more than 5 minutes to discover that by trial and error!
• If your component as any inner or anonymous classes, you will need to put your component and its dependent files in a JAR file first, then add the entire JAR file. I still can’t get this to work. The components you add refused to be deleted because they are default. I know this sounds totally nuts, but just add the jar file again, then delete them and they will all come out if you try to delete even one of them.
• To add a component to the library you click Insert Component into library and select the class file, then select the group. Oddly, you can’t do this from the component library window. Further, seems to work best if you have the component libary window closed. It refuses to add some components sometimes. It just whirrs away for about 10 seconds, then acts as if I had never given the add component command. I have not yet figured out the circumstance. It gives no error message. This may be pigeon superstition, but I can sometimes get it to work by adding the component and anything it uses to the current project, rebuilding the project and restarting VCP.
• To remove a component from the library, you must click Window, Component library, then select the component, then hit DEL. Unfortunately, clicking the right mouse button does not offer a delete.

Installing a JavaBean Component On The Toolbar

• Click Tools, Environment Options, Component Palette.
• To add a component to the toolbar, select a component in the library on the left to add to the toolbar, click a palette group on the right to add it to and then click ADD.
• To remove a component from the toolbar, select a component to remove from the toolbar on the right and click REMOVE.
• To add a new group to the toolbar, click New Group.
• To remove a group from the toolbar, highlight the group name on the right,and click REMOVE.
• Unfortunately, you can’t add or remove groups or components from the library using this screen. You can only affect the toolbar.
• You can drag and drop groups and components of the toolbar to reorder them.
• Be careful. It is very easy to highlight on the left and click REMOVE and then something on the right will disappear.

How JavaBean Installs Should Work

Your component library and toolbar are more integrated. Each component can be marked visible or invisible — which determines whether it shows up on the toolbar. If a group contains nothing but invisible components, that group does not show up on the toolbar.

You start the process off by clicking on the Window Component Library, or right clicking on the component toolbar and selecting edit palette.. You see the component library with groups that can be +/- expanded/-collapsed to see the components. Components are colour coded to indicate visible-invisible.

You right click on any component:

• add component
• delete component
• v on toolbar (the v represents a check toggling check mark)
• browse component (if available)
• view source (if available)

• add group
• delete group
• rename group
• add component

Attempting to Create A Jar file With the IDE (Integrated Development Environment)

1. The waiting cursor stays on indefinitely when you click JAR.
2. You can’t just accept the offered filename or type your own name for the created JAR file, you must click the… and select the filename that way.
3. After you select the file, you must wait fifteen seconds or so while it looks for files likely to go in your jar. It gives you no indication it is busy other than the more icon is grayed out.
4. When you add a dependency, the display does not change to reflect that change. You have to select an unrelated item.
5. Every time you add a file it forgets the directory you last picked up a file from.
6. It will not let you add more than one dependency. (What do you do with a bean with two inner anonymous classes?)
7. I’m not totally sure of this, but it seems that once you remove a file, you can’t add it back. Under some conditions, add refuses to do anything.
8. It is not clear from the documentation that dependent classes are also supposed to be represented at the outer level. You can’t select a dependent class that is not already added as a class in its own right at the top level.
9. I would like a bit more explanation of just what dependencies are. I would think it means that class A uses the dependent classes B and C, or gifs d and e. Then a class B might be a dependent of several classes. Since this information is already encoded in the class files themselves, what is this FOR?

Creating A Jar file with JAR.EXE

D:\vcp\java\bin\jar.exe cfvm myjar.jar manifest.mf myDir

Don’t for get the f option and don’t put any spaces between the option letters or your screen will receive the unintelligible binary output.

Then use WinZip to prune the junk out you don’t want. Unfortunately it won’t clean up the MANIFEST.MF file for you. Jar.exe does not seem to understand wildcards. WinZip tends to put too much directory information in the jar file if you try to build it with WinZip directly.

You can then add more files like

D:\vcp\java\bin\jar.exe fv myjar.jar myDir\myDir2\myClass1.class

Bugs

• If you accidentally leave off the trailing } on a method when you edit using the class browser, Visual Cafe Pro will crash when you leave editing that method.
• Always put each project in a separate directory. Otherwise, there are bound to be name conflicts and you will overwrite your old source.The application generator wizards are quite happy to write over existing projects without even a warning message.
• After you manually edit source generated by the forms designer or property editor, don’t use the forms designer or property editor again. The only source code changes that appear to be safe are property values. Don’t manually add components, or change their type. Make sure any component types you are editing are in the library. The tool does not seem to work at all well if you make any changes to the library components, e.g. add, remove, or rename properties. Make sure you have a backup before using the forms designer. It can make some very severe unwanted changes to your code like converting all your custom components back into TextFields and throwing out all calls to set the properties of your custom components.
• Sometimes you add a method or constructor to a class, then the compiler complains when you try to use it in some other class. REBUILD ALL seems to clear its pea brain.
• When you create a jar file, you should create it in the same directory where the components you are adding to it live. The jar create command in VCP is very primitive. Once you create a jar it is sealed, from the point of view of VCP. You have to manually edit the MANIFEST.MF file, add, freshen, etc. thereafter. Run time cannot see a jar file unless it is mentioned, fully qualified in the CLASSPATH (sc.ini).
• One the ways to crash Visual Café is to rename a *.java file in the current project and then fire VCP up again. VCP will go looking for that file and will offer you a file open dialog to go find it. Since the file does not exist anymore, you click cancel. Down goes VCP. However, if you humour it and give it the wrong file, e.g. the renamed file, which it will reject, then later hit cancel, you are able to recover and remove the file from the project and replace it with the new name.
• If you change the code for a component. You must delete the component from the library, reinstall it into the component library. Delete the old components from your frames. Exit and restart Visual Cafe. Insert the new components back into your frames.