Integrated Development Environments

An Integrated Development Environment, or IDE for short, is a piece of software that provides a means to create software and web applications. They generally include a source code editor, for programming purposes, a compiler where needed, for building an application and debugging tools, to aid in the resolution of bugs or problems with an application.

There are many IDEs available, some of which are designed for specific web technologies, whereas others are more general purpose. Below is a selection of a small number of the IDEs available.

Microsoft Visual Studio

Microsoft Visual StudioVisual Studio is a development environment produced by Microsoft, that can be used for developing websites, Windows desktop applications, mobile applications, web services and more. It supports development in all the .NET programming languages including, Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++ and Visual F#, as well as other web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript and CSS. Other languages are supported via language support services, which need to be installed separately.

As well as the full version of Visual Studio, Microsoft also provide a Community Edition, which is free for non-commercial use, and a completely free and open source version called Visual Studio Code.

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Adobe Dreamweaver

DreamweaverAdobe Dreamweaver is software used by web designers and developers for creating websites and mobile applications. It provides the facility to work in design view, where the user can, for example, type text content or place an image, and the HTML code is generated automatically. Alternatively, the user can work in code view and manually enter code, such as HTML, to generate a web page.

Dreamweaver supports a wide variety of web technologies including, HTML and CSS, PHP, JavaScript, ASP, ASP.NET and many more. It also includes the facility to transfer files to a web server via FTP.

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Oracle Application Express

Oracle Application ExpressOracle Application Express, or APEX for short, is a web based application development environment for use with an Oracle Database, from version 9.2 onwards and is installed as standard, at no extra cost, with Oracle Database 11g onwards. It can be used to produce complex database driven web applications for use with most modern web browsers.

As APEX is produced by Oracle and comes as part of the Oracle Database, it has full support for all the database capabilities, such as, SQL, PL/SQL and JavaScript. Its features include a code editor with syntax highlighting and code completion, as well as an intuitive drag and drop layout.

In order to help the user get started with APEX development, there are 35 sample applications included, which can be used as a starting point to help speed up the development process.

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