So I have been using JDeveloper 11g for a while and have to admit that I wasn’t a big fan finding a bit flaky and prone to crashing. The biggest driver to using it has been the fact that it offers a lot of XMLSpy like features without the stupidly high XMLSpy license costs.

With JDeveloper 12c arriving I took the opportunity to give it a go. Wow, is it so much better – quicker particularly during the startup cycle and way more reliable. The features around XSD editing haven’t significantly changed but just feels subtly easier to use.

With all the features around working with SOA Suite 12c and Weblogic 12c for core Oracle development I can imagine it is a huge step forward.

With the easier deployment of 12c getting PoC work done should be a lot easier. It’s just a shame still needs that huge 8GB footprint to do anything meaningful and my company laptop being a notebook (great for travelling with) doesn’t pack that punch and Oracle isn’t yet offering low cost SOA Suite deployments in the cloud yet.