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Visual Café provides all of the public methods that affect the behavior of a user component. You choose which method should be invoked when the interaction occurs at run time. In fact, it takes less time to perform the process than it does to describe it. However, you cannot explicitly specify a custom method to invoke upon an event. We were forced to generate some code for a fake property (using a Wizard) and edit the resultant code manually.

Symantec knew long ago that database access is an essential part of application development. So before JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) was in style, Symantec developed its own set of tools, called dbAnywhere, that supports local and remote database access. Symantec supports JDBC in Visual Café and also provides access to it through dbAnywhere.

However, we found the ability to use both of these access methods a bit confusing. It's possible to use just JDBC, Symantec's extensions or a combination of both. We chose to use pure JDBC in our code, but used the dbAnywhere middleware to connect to our DBMS. The ability to use dbAnywhere lets programmers easily develop three-tier, client/server applet-based applications.

For example, we developed an application that queries information from a Microsoft Access DBMS using JDBC. We registered the Data Source Name on our server via the control panel and ran Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) and dbAnywhere on a second system. Our application was developed as an applet running inside Internet Explorer. The applet opened a JDBC connection to the dbAnywhere server--same IP address as the Web server, but on a different TCP port (conforming to applet security restrictions). The dbAnywhere server forwarded the SQL requests to our Access DBMS and returned results to the applet.

The environment offers multiple views while working, making it easy to use. The design view lets you visually lay out your application or applet by placing different components on a canvas. You can change the properties through a windowed interface. The source-code view lets you interactively edit your source code, and the Class Browser let you navigate through the hierarchy of classes in our project. Windows within the IDE can be docked or left floating--a good alternative when working with 800 x 600 resolution.

Like all Java IDEs, Visual Café generates Java source code that corresponds to the components placed on your canvas. The generated code is placed between a special type of comment separator, which distinguishes it from handwritten code. Visual Café parses the code to determine the canvas layout and to perform its own housekeeping.

We were tempted to edit the code ourselves to obtain extra control. Of course, on each of our overconfident attempts, Visual Café rightfully complained that it could not parse the code and lost part of our work.

Symantec's proprietary components, offered in addition to the standard AWT components and the new Swing components, can be used in applications and applets. We took one, the MultiList grid component, for a spin and found some shortcomings. For example, it did not allow cell editing.

During the course of our tests we found a pair of annoying bugs. From time to time, Visual Café rearranged components on the canvas, leaving them in strange places. Visual Café's debugger caused us more heartache. While using exceptions, the debugger seemed to lose track of its place in the code. Whenever a code exception was thrown while the debugger was off-track, we were forced to terminate the application and start over. Symantec says that both of these problems will be fixed in an upcoming release.

Be aware that Symantec offers an excellent support mechanism, called "Ask a Tech," on its Web site. Developers can post questions to a list and a Symantec answer usually appears within 24 hours. Questions and answers are available for all to read.