adam bien's blog

10 Useful Java EE Tools 📎

  1. NetBeans is amazing. With a single download you get a fully integrated Java EE IDE (with CSS editor, HTML 5 support, JPA support, JPA QL auto completion, great maven support, profiler, debugger and DB explorer)
  2. Maven 3--the simplest possible build tool for Java EE projects. If you follow the conventions, Maven is great! A few years ago, I preferred Ant over Maven, but with Maven 3 performance improvements and the available tooling, Maven 3 is a good choice even for smallest projects.
  3. VisualVM--a great Java profiler and monitoring tool (not a surprise, it is actually NetBeans subset).
  4. JMeter--the easy to use load generator
  5. lightfish.adam-bien.com--I wrote lightfish for easier stress test analysis. LightFish persists and exposes essential GlassFish metrics.
  6. Mockito--a mocking "framework". Easy to use and convenient. Kills the myth that you need interfaces for efficient unit-testing.
  7. Eclipse Memory Analyzer Tool--great utility for heap dump analysis (although it is Eclipse based, it is very easy to install and use :-))
  8. Arquillian--a unit test runner with application server integration. The killer feature: with arquillian you can remove all mocks from src/main/java
  9. Java Decompiler--if you need to look under the hood.
  10. Sonar--useful and dangerous at the same time. My favorite feature: the ability to combine code coverage with cyclomatic complexity. See "clouds".