This article explains how I'm able to use an aging but still capable Mac for database development in a company that develops commercial decision support software for hospitals. I wrote this article because I think the results of the search I made for software that allows me to work productively on this machine may be of use to others.
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Some solid choices. I use mysql/navicat, spring/hibernate, tomcat, apache, php5, perl, xcode, omnigraffle/omnioutliner, subversion (code), pages (iwork), etc...
I go much lighter with these choices.
wow you found a nice bunch of os x apps. I am also having a hard time deciding between xcode and eclipse, but i am a java noob. i mostly did stuff in vb .net before, but i've had my mac since august so i decided to learn something new. there are also other apps like adium, iterm (really nice terminal replacement), btw the document comparison thing you can do from the terminal using diff, also would like to hear if you would switch to mac for personal use.
I would in a heart beat. My needs can be met with a Mac mini so that's what I'm getting when it ships with Tiger (OS 10.4) installed.
would like to hear if you would switch to mac for personal use.
I will myself once Tiger is out.
used tiger a while back, the few things i really liked were being able to search in the system preferences,the new look (whatever its called), and the revamped mail because right now mail really sucks. ;-p I also plan on getting a mac mini within the week because I obtained a copy of panther server should be interesting. I only have a powerbook and don't wanna run panther server on it.
iTerm isnt that fantasitc, it doesnt do ansi color or anything.
If you want a super awsome best IDE ever, use IDEA by jetbrains. It's way better than Eclipse and XCode.
booter, i seriosly doubt you can do that. CPU and MB would be at least 300 ad windows XP and some basic apps, and your already over 500 bucks. No HD, mem, video, case, cdrom, anything... And its not preassembled and warenteed. Plus its going to be 10x the volume of the mac mini.
> If you want a super awsome best IDE ever, use IDEA by jetbrains
With a much heftier price. for $500.00 it better be.
Thanks for the article. I was very happy to find the list of software, url and price at the end.
The betas are free and you get to use all the new features.
I was interested, since the article mentioned developing for Oracle 9i, if people have interest/experience/comments regarding Oracle 10g on OSX Server....developing, client-side, on OSX is half the equation, what about the other half?
Anyone care to chime in on the server side of the Oracle db/development environment under OSX?
Mark
I've been thru a few offices in the past 10 years. I first pushed (if you can believe it) for MS BackOffice and Office (for the front) and ended up standardizing our company on Microsoft across all machines. But through that I got burned one too many times by MS. This isn't an MS bashing comment either.
After than I went through various companies who usually had a hodge-podge of what worked and what hurt to use. I now have a startup (again) and I think we've hit a sweet spot.
Since my partner is a business guy and OOo still isn't 100% on formatting, we allow MS Office into the fray (haven't tried Pages yet). However, when we do presentations offsite, all out PowerPoint (usually my partners) are all run through Keynote. We bring along a 12"1Ghz G4 Powerbook, a small projector (just in case) and a Keynote remote control. Our presentations always turn out great and def. look different.
Our product is web based and we've managed to do some cool XHTML stuff and have it work on IE, Moz-based, and even Safari. We cluster two Tomcat servers behind 2 Apache servers and those connect to a Postgres 8 server with a hot backup - all running Linux, of course.
Our mail server is available to the outside via https access for co-workers and also Imaps. Our product has calendaring/scheduling built in based on the iCal standard, so we can do really cool stuff with web and free clients such as Sunbird and also Apple iCal.
Our main development boxes are mostly Macs - and those mostly Powerbooks - and a few Linux machines. 1 developer has Windows and he's responsible for it.
I think all this works for us because I've spent so much time over the years seeing what does and does not work and looking here and there. For a medium to big outfit tho, it's a tough call. As much as I'd like the geek squad to run the show, we ultimately have to provide the tools that work for the biz guys so they can bring home the money. I did read a bit on Novell Hula and maybe that'll help with some of the calendaring - always seemed to be a sticking spot at so many places.
Anyay, the offices that don't use MS throughout, for now, are diamonds in the rough.
This is a good article written with honesty and hard work.
It will be a great boon for company who want to switch to Mac for database devekioment work
jEdit is not an IDE. It's just an editor.
But yeah, it's good.
Does he have a Mac at home? Or did he just want to try out a Mac and see if it would work? We get no explanation on if he is a complete newbie to Mac or just a regular user some where else in his office. I really want to know why did he decided to switch.
I'm actually a hard core mac lover. I fell in love with the promise of the interface when I saw my first Mac back in 1984. I've owned several through the intervening years. (My current home Mac is a beige G3 MT running OS9.) But as I started developing database software, I gravitated towards Windows because that's where the money was. Eventually, because that's where the tools were too I switched to Windows-only development in the late 90's.
I kept watching the Mac to see if it would survive during all that time. Now, with the advent of OSX and especially with Panther and the tools I wrote about, I think it will.
I take a fair amount of grief from my coworkers for switching from a Dell that has twice the horsepower of the G4 to the G4. But with the stability and look of the OS, plus the lack of concern I have for virus and all the rest, I consider it a more than fair trade.
More than one co-worker is now getting a Mac or considering the purchase of one for personal use. Plus the comments from those who yearn for a 'nix workstation tell me that Apple is headed in the right direction and will only get stronger in the business space in the years ahead. So, I'm also enjoying being at what I consider the bleading edge of Mac database development.
Another comment: I mistakenly cited the publisher of PMX as "JTech Software". It's actually "JTech Softworks". Sorry about the error. The link is still good.
I use Eclipse for anything other than Cocoa development - I'm surpised you didn't explore a few more plugins...particularly the Azzurri Clay plugin for DB design, and dbedit for...editing
Just wanted to add that Adium is a very serviceable Lotus SameTime chat client! That was one of the biggest roadblocks I encountered using my PowerBook in a large corporation.
Very nice article, simple but yet very sincere.
As I've mentioned many times here, I am stuck with Microsoft tools because we use .NET/C#
I've been going mono from time to time but there are two BIG issues with mono on OS X.
1) Mono itself does not support Windows.Forms namespace (yes it is starting to, but not for a production enterprise aplication). Cocoa# (which should be the aqua looking windows forms stuff for OS X) is still less than alpha...
2) Visual Studio.NET: Although I am not saying that VS.NET is the BEST IDE that you will find all over the world (haven't tried 'em all anyways), it is very productive if you're in a windows environment, and know what you're doing with .NET
SharpDevelop (the OS alternative) is very good, but when I tried to import one of our projects, I got unhandled exceptions (reported to the developers..).
But... wait... SharpDevelop is a Windows only thing... for Unix we've got MonoDevelop... which is not as mature as SharpDevelop!
The lack of a comfortable, non-geek-only, easy to use, fast and reliable IDE (in the language of your choice) is a must if you pretend to develop. Unless of course you're a hardcore editor instead of an ide. In which case I'm still waiting for suggestions... none has proven to be useful so far.
I admire the author of the article for being able to switch (if we only had chosen Java instead!!). I use the Mac at work to.. it handles all the Mail (Notes and Pop), music, Aqua Studio for talking with the MySQL, RSS Feeds, etc.. but I would love to be using the box for writting code, debugging, etc., as easy as it is under windows.
The moment you start performing tasks in OS X, you don't want to go back to Windows. The usability under OS X (which may take a few days to get used to) is awesome; and it looks like it will improve!
:p
- I use DreamWeaver, JBuilder2005 Developer, for batch Java programming
- I use DreamWeaver/SharpDevelop/VPC on a Powerbook 1.5 with 1gig.
It's doable but you've got to turn off everything except IIS, and use MySql for your database. Oracle is just too heavy a db engine to run under VPC.
- Then there's Remote Desktop Connection which runs very well when you can't get it done on your local machine.
- I'm looking at JBoss / Eclipse for JDeveloper for J2EE in the future...
This was a well written and useful article. Kudos to the author. I appreciated the pointer to PMX; project management tools for the Mac don't often come up for discussion here (not complaining of course, I'm "just sayin").