The integrated development environment (IDE) is a big part of the toolkit of a modern software developer. Java projects have complex development processes, especially if the project is going to be developed using open source and J2EE technologies. A smart and efficient IDE plays an important role in making developers more efficient and productive in doing their tasks and meeting project deadlines. This review discusses one such smart IDE - IDEA 4.0.

JetBrains, Inc., develops the IntelliJ line of products and IDEA is their IDE for Java development. At the time of this writing, IDEA 4.0 was on its way to being released.

IDEA is not only a server-side development IDE, the new release also has a GUI designer for front-end development and design. IDEA integrates various tools like Ant, JUnit, and CVS. It provides a lot of help to the developer without getting in the way. The keys, editor settings, SDK settings, path, etc., are fully and easily configurable.

An evaluation copy can be downloaded from their Web site with your choice of platform, and installation is easy and smooth. I'm sure you'll be very pleased with its documentation, which is well written and extremely helpful to developers.

The following is a brief description of some of IDEA's features, most of which are important for any Java developer.

Those Import Statements!
If you're a developer who has been doing Java for some time, you'll love this one - IDEA has a feature called Import Assistant. As soon as you use a class name that's not imported in your current class, it'll pop up a hint showing the qualified package name of the class you just typed in and a help tip showing Alt-Enter.

As shown in Figure 1, if you press the Alt-Enter keys the import statement relevant to the class you are typing in will be inserted. Also, when a chunk of code is pasted from some other class, it will pop up a list of imports that you'll need. By just pressing Alt-Enter, all the imports are in your class.

IDEA also indicates to the developer any irrelevant imports in a class by graying it out, thus optimizing the import statements.

Do I Have to Write Another Loop?
Tired of writing iterations and loops? There is a very powerful feature called Live Templates. If you want to write some code to iterate through a List, just type itli, press Ctlr-J, and the entire List iteration code will be written for you (see Figure 2).

Of course, you can go in and change whatever you want, but the best part is that the most tedious work is eliminated from the developer's list. This is a big time-saver.

There are many other templates available in this IDE that help code the most commonly used code sequences. For instance, sout for System.out.println() - you don't have to type the complete statement over and over again.

IDEA also allows you to write your own templates and store them. Another feature, somewhat related to this one that's worth mentioning, is that IDEA provides the developer with an option to surround a piece of code with if/else, try/catch, while, etc.

Refactoring
IDEA does a good job of refactoring. It provides a developer with most of the refactorings like renaming and signature changes. The process of refactoring has been simplified and IDEA helps the developer do a selective refactoring too. To make refactoring work properly, the user is given only a "Save All" option to save his or her files so that the developer does not omit any changed files while saving.

More Features
The features described above gave you a flavor of what IDEA 4.0 has to offer. There are many more helpful features supported, such as code reformatting, searching, and intention actions. You can read about these features on the JetBrains documentation site.

Web as well as EJB development is well supported by IDEA 4.0, and it now supports BEA WebLogic deployment. I've tested both of these environments and they're great to use. For instance, if your J2EE project supports role-based security, using IDEA will greatly simplify modifying the ejb-jar.xml.

Also, it includes generics support. This is a useful feature for supporting Java 1.5.

Summary
If you're a Java developer, then IDEA is for you. It takes a lot of repetitive, boring, and time-consuming code off your list so you can spend more time designing, optimizing, and improving the product quality. It provides a total integrated environment for Web and J2EE development. A developer does not have to use different editors or tools for XML, JSP, etc., as they're all integrated in this one single tool. For convenience and usability, it cleanly integrates most of the popular industry tools like Ant, JUnit, and CVS.

I used this IDE on at least two different projects: one with EJB2.0 and the other a Web application. I used it on two machines and it performed well on both machines and projects. After you get used to it, Java development is a breeze!

JetBrains s.r.o.
Klanova 9/506
14700 Prague
Czech Republic
Phone: +420 2 4172 2501
Fax: +420 2 6171 1724
E-mail: info@intellij.com
Web: www.jetbrains.com

Specifications
Platforms: Any platform with JDK 1.4.x

Test Environments
Test Machine 1: Win 2000, 500MHz CPU, 128MB RAM
Test Machine 2: Win XP Pro, 3GHz CPU, 512MB RAM

Snapshot
Target Audience: Java developers and architects
Level: Beginner to advanced
Pros:

• Powerful code completion
• Powerful refactoring
• Powerful editor
• Clean tool integration
• Easy to use
• Fully configurable
• Efficient memory management
• Good documentation

• Difficult to import existing EJB projects