Installing Oracle JDeveloper on Ubuntu

To complete configuration of Ubuntu machine that I’ll use later for Oracle Development, let’s install JDeveloper, Oracle’s main Java development tool.

Although JDeveloper is free, it has never had any significant traction among Java developers.

In Java IDE space there are several great competitors, starting with Eclipse, IntelliJ and NetBeans.

With such competition it’s difficult to gain more traction.

But for development based on Oracle software, JDeveloper has some feature you won’t find anywhere else.

Just to list few of feature that are created with Oracle products in mind:

• developing Java Stored Procedures (deploying, debugging…)
• developing Java XML applications
• developing JEE applications targeted at WebLogic application server (JDeveloper even contains integrated WebLogic app server to test created JEE application locally)
• integration with OSB (Oracle Service Bus)
• integration with Oracle SOA

Installation of JDeveloper is really trivial.

As prerequisite you need to have JDK 8 installed prior to launch installer, and to download appropriate installation files (2 files).

You can either choose platform specific installer (.exe files on Windows or .bin on Linux) or Generic (with .jar extension).

I usually pick the later one and just execute the following command:

user@user-Ubuntu1804LTS:~/Downloads/jdev_installation>java -jar jdev_suite_122130.jar 

During installation you should note the following information:

• Inventory Directory: /home/user/oraInventory
• Operating System Group: user
• Oracle Home: /home/user/Oracle/Middleware/Oracle_Home

You should also observe the following warning during the installation:

Warning:

This Oracle software was not certified on the current operating system at the time it was made generally available.

It’s interesting to see that most popular Linux distribution was not certified yet.

It means if you hit some issue, you are on your own. Only Linux community answers might help.

Anyway, the most important is Java version, and I had no issues with JDeveloper installation.

If you want to be able to run JDeveloper from any location when you are in terminal, you need to create link like in the folowing example:

root@user-Ubuntu1804LTS:/usr/local/bin>ln -s /home/user/Oracle/Middleware/Oracle_Home/jdeveloper/jdev/bin/jdev jdev

In case you want to start JDeveloper from the GUI, first you need to execute the following command form /usr/share/applications directory:

root@user-Ubuntu1804LTS:/usr/share/applications>touch jdeveloper.desktop

and add the following:

root@user-Ubuntu1804LTS:/usr/share/applications>vim jdeveloper.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Exec=jdev
Terminal=false
StartupNotify=true
Categories=GNOME;Oracle;
Type=Application
Icon=/home/user/Oracle/Middleware/Oracle_Home/jdeveloper/jdev/bin/jdev_icon.gif
Name=Oracle JDeveloper

#to update desktop database and see the desktop entry
sudo update-desktop-database

As the last check I advice to try some Java code that will connect to Oracle database.

Here I have to say that JDeveloper is not intuitive like some of it’s competitors, and you’ll need to take time to get used to.

The most important is to add ojdbc8.jar in classpath of JDeveloper project like in the following figure.

Location of the Oracle jdbc driver is inside Instant Client directory that I’ve installed before.
Further details you can find on the following link:

https://www.josip-pojatina.com/en/python-oracle-instant-client-connection-setup-on-linux/

Summary:

I found installation of JDeveloper on Ubuntu to be straightforward, if we ignore one warning because Ubuntu was not certified.

Main problem you can see later, when you actually start to use JDeveloper, as to be modest, JDeveloper is not the most intuitive Java IDE that I’ve seen so far.

You need to get used to how JDeveloper is organizing your projects (Application –> Project…), and to catch it’s logic, as it’s way of work is quite different from what you would expected.

The only disappointment for me is fact that Ubuntu is not certify to work with JDeveloper, but untill everything is working as expected, I can ignore certification issue for now.

Hopefully Oracle will add Ubuntu on the list of supported OS.

At this moment you should have the following tools installed on your machine:

• Oracle Instant Client (or full Oracle client in case you are using one of the Red Hat clones)
• Python (CPython or Anaconda)
• cx_Oracle Python driver for Oracle
• Sqlcl
• SqlDeveloper
• JDeveloper
• SQL*Plus (optionally on top of Oracle Instant Client)

Although I could add several more tools and expend the list, I consider listed tools to be solid basis for starting modern Oracle development.

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