All the world seems to be moving toward Java development, but a great deal of time and money have been invested in getting up to speed on tools such as Visual Basic. Although transitions such as these are not a new problem, it still hurts each time the toolset changes. Always accompanying all of that pain is someone coming along to try to make the transition easier. In some cases those transition aids work; in other cases they fall far short of the mark and die a well-deserved death. Even those that come near their mark are in some ways doomed; once the transition is completed, who needs them? TV Objects' Applet Designer Professional and Applet Designer Enterprise edition go beyond mere transition or translation and are, in fact, aimed at the long-term tool market.
For this review, I worked with a beta copy of Applet Designer Enterprise Edition, which should be in full release by the time you read this. The main differences between the Enterprise Edition and the Professional Edition are the Enterprise Edition's ability to convert an entire Visual Basic project into an application instead of single forms, and to convert Visual Basic class modules into Java RMI servers; additional control support; and expanded support of methods, properties, control arrays, and color functions. Promised for the production versions are even greater control support, server-side file I/O and printing, Visual Basic math functions, support for MDI forms, and support for RDO.
By default, the installation of Applet Designer is very neat. All of the files and folders associated with the product were placed in a single "Applet Designer" folder within the "Program Files" directory of my machine. In that folder are the program files, sample files, JDBC files, the standalone Java Applet Viewer, and the full 1.1 release of the Java Developer's Kit. If you do not want to use the JDK compiler, Applet Designer lets you choose one of your own, such as Visual J++ from Microsoft.
After trying out my own small applets, I loaded some of the included sample applications. In truth, I should have done this first. By looking at how the sample applets, such as a calculator and address book, were laid out and coded, I was able to gain some of the same insight into variable usage and typing that I gained the hard way by doing it on my own. This is where a large manual with more specific exercises and tutorials would come in handy. Although the manual accompanying the Applet Designer is sufficient, it doesn't go as far as a new user will desire.
Finally I turned my attention to one of the larger, multicontrol, client/server applications that I had developed. Suffice it to say that the translation of an application of this size cannot be done without significant rewrite. Applet Designer supports translation to Java of many of the controls and constructs that are native to Visual Basic, such as command buttons, radio buttons, and text boxes. For these controls, most normally used properties, such as text and color, are supported; errors will be generated for use of any unsupported properties. Other Visual Basic tools are supported with some caveats. For example, CASE statements may only be based upon integer values. This can be more than a minor hindrance if you are used to using string values for the comparison. Only things expressly forbidden in Java, such as variant variable types, will completely stop the show. Additionally, you will have to forgo all of those fancy third-party components that you have been using. This might not stop you if you are developing with only the components that shipped with Visual Basic strait from Microsoft, but most programmers have added third-party tools from companies such as Sheridan Software Systems Inc. or VideoSoft that have no equivalent in Java. If you have one of these in your project, you will have to take it out and completely redesign that functionality in some Java-friendly way. Equivalent Java components or Beans are coming, but they are not here yet.
The database component of Applet Designer Enterprise Edition is quite impressive. With a simple form to complete with the connectivity options, this is one of the easiest ways I have seen to build a database-enabled applet. Unfortunately, ODBC calls are not translated directly to their JDBC equivalents, but anyone familiar with the ODBC connectivity of Visual Basic will feel right at home with this JDBC environment. (See Figure 2.) For those programmers not familiar with ODBC, there should be only a slight learning curve.
The tougher question to answer is the product's longevity. It is an extremely useful tool for a beginning Java programmer with a background in Visual Basic, but it would have little value for programmers without a Visual Basic background. And, as the novice Java programmer's knowledge level increases, the desire to do more of the work directly in that language increases as well. This will become increasingly true as products such as Microsoft Corp.'s Visual J++, Borland International Inc.'s JBuilder, and SunSoft's Java Workshop become as easy to work with for designing applications as Visual Basic and Delphi. Priced at nearly $500 for the Professional edition and approximately $1,000 for the Enterprise edition, I have to ask if I shouldn't just put that money towards a Java training class or one of those other Java visual design tools.
