How often have you been writing SAP NetWeaver Java code and you have to find out which Jar file to include for a certain class that you need. There is a cool web-site called SapJarFinder which will help you find the correct Jar file.
Even more impressive is the additional functionality that that the site provides:
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A web-service that allows you to perform a search from any web-service enabled client or development environment
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Browser Search Plugin
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Eclipse/NWDS Plugin
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You can also provide code snippets so that others can see examples on certain classes.
Besides these very useful features, I also liked the interaction with SDN/BPX. Users can add their SAP SDN Business Card ID to their code snippets. Currently, the interation between SapJarFinder and SDN/BPX is pretty loose. Once again, SapJarFinder provides evidence that SCN content (user profiles, wikis, etc.) is valuable outside of the community itself. I think there would be even more external sites that could tap into the information source if there were more open interfaces (a problem which I wrote about in an Opening the Treasure Chest: External Access to SDN / BPX Content via Mash-Ups). For example, if the SDN code snippets wiki had a public interface (perhaps a web-service), there would probably be more contributions of code. The Eclipse/NWDS Plugin from SapJarFinder provides this feature and think it is a great idea.
This would be a handy site for NetWeaver developers.
An additional search feature could be based on the NetWeaver Component like PI or Portal. Hope to see that soon from SAP :). Thanks!!
Best Regards,
Prateek
D.
Thanks, I have needed this some may times when doing java development.
/daniel
http://classlocator.sourceforge.net/doc/Overview.html
-Bryant
I understand (by suffering from this situation a long time on my own) why people are lucky with “such” a tool – but it’s superfluous to reinvent the wheel…
No offense, best regards
Detlev
No offense taken.
Dick
It’s especially the WebService and the Eclipse Plugin (also downloadable from sapjarfinder) where I ask myself: For what’s sake? As just answered to Michael, the results of sapjarfinder are not generically usable. I’m pragmatic, and I see the problem the sapjarfinder people saw, but there is a solution, and a very generic one, already there. There has been much workload put into sapjarfinder, the site, the webservice, the NWDS plugin – for no sake but just for doing something “which can be done”. And just “being connected to SDN” is of no worth at all on it’s own.
Imagine, what could have bean reached if the workload would have been put into something “new”. Just an example, I never had time to do implement, but what would be terrific: An Eclipse plugin which takes the .classpath entries and builds (Sharing)Referencing entries (or vice versa) – as a tool extending the functionality CL offers!
So, I think it’s wasted time, having developed all the things on sapjarfinder (and I hope that people will use CL for it’s better strategy, see answer above); and that makes me just a bit crying – on the one hand seeing people doing much work, but somewhat into the wrong direction / project, and on the other hand people applausing, just for other people doing “something”, not realy estimating the effort rationally…
Best regards
Detlev
I think it is a useful site for those people in the forums who ask ‘where do I find class file blah’. Instead of saying ‘download class locator and set it up’ we can say ‘go to this web site’!
Cheers
Exactly this I do not think. Me and others often have pointed to CL in the forums (and there is a CL blog also). I have pointed out the advantages of CL, one more is: You always search against the code base you are using (especially between major versions sometimes pathes do change). In the forums, people often do not realize that JARs may be version dependent (not so seldom people are asking “who can me send this JAR” – and there are even people who answer: “I will!”!); if something mus be learned, then it is, that developers need the JARs locally, and, already said in my first comment, then going on with CL helps better (not only for referencing the *right* JARs, but also building up the .classpath file).
So, I definitely do hope that in the forums this answer won’t be given too often; it won’t really make issues resolved faster…
Best regards
Detlev
This is one of the basic things !
Then it is suficient to use the Class Locator tool in the Eclipse environment to lacate jars and add them to the project automatically.
No need for thi ssite.
Cheers
Frank