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Code-centric search tool strives to reduce Java development time

IBM's jCentral among the first of a new wave of targeted search engines

By Mariva H. Aviram, JavaWorld.com, 06/01/98

Page 3 of 7

The jCentral code-approval staff doesn't judge the quality of the code submitted or provide editorial content. This encourages developers to write abstracts and descriptions about their own code, so that users will be inclined to learn more about it and put it to use. Once the code is approved, metadata, which is the descriptive information about the output data (rather than the output data itself), is added to the jCentral repository.

Visual maps, e-mail notification

An impressive feature of jCentral is its ability to provide a class hierarchy diagram of a Java bean or component, which is a visual map of the code. (See the example Class Navigator image below.) When clicked, each node in the diagram provides relevant code and descriptive information in the box at the bottom. (To view a diagram, click the Map button next to the search result abstract. A good example to try is the bean keyword frame, because it uses a lot of the JDK.)

jCentral also offers an automatic e-mail notification service, which initiates a persistent query and periodically sends subscribers new results of a single search. Developers can use this feature to search for resources they need for development or find new instances of their own source code posted by others on the Internet. Combining both immediate searching and notification for future search results eliminates the burden of running constant searches for the same thing. This comes in handy if, for example, you're always looking for a new and improved animation bean. And jCentral users needn't worry about receiving unsolicited advertisements as a result of submitting an e-mail address to this service -- IBM notes that jCentral is not a marketing tool, so information about subscribers will not be used for any purpose beyond notifying subscribers of search results.

Avoid duplicate efforts; learn from others

jCentral lends itself to a plethora of purposes and potential uses. The most obvious use is to avoid duplicate efforts in code development. If someone has already created a code example or devised a tutorial that will save you time and energy, you might as well use it -- that is, if you can find it.

Finding appropriate examples and tutorials comes in handy when you're stuck on a line or section of code. For instance, if you need a good MD5 security algorithm or a specific invoked method (which typically is difficult to find), you can search for and evaluate such code using jCentral. Or, if you're developing Java for use with a database, you can run searches for examples that involve tier 3 (the back-end database), tier 2 (middleware), or tier 1 (the client). (For instance, a search on the class name java.net.socket would yield results related to connections to back-end databases.) Once you find code that will work for you, you can ask the author for permission to use it. You can also analyze how someone else developed a certain aspect of code to give you ideas on how to design your own. Just one successful use of jCentral can save you at least a couple of hours of development time.

 

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