Experience Helps

 

If you've used Eclipse, you'll be right at home with Servoy. If you haven't used Eclipse and are hoping to use Servoy as an entry point to Java programming and development, you might be a bit disappointed. Assume that you need a good amount of experience with developing Java apps to get started with Servoy.

The documentation available for the 5.2 release is now pretty good (though rough during the betas) and should get you up and running quickly if you're familiar with JavaScript.

To test Servoy, I went through a few of the video tutorials provided with the package and text documentation. In general, even though video tutorials move a bit more slowly than I like, the videos are a better way to get started. The developer interface isn't necessarily intuitive, and it's much more helpful to watch along.

I also toyed with deploying to the Servoy application server. This is simple enough to do, but I'd like to see more documentation on deploying to a server environment (as opposed to the developer environment) and more on troubleshooting. It's not overly difficult to deploy from Servoy, but I'd like to see a bit more "real-world" documentation.

Since we started early with the testing, we were able to try out the update features as well. Updating Servoy worked like a charm, and the updater did a good job of keeping the developer and server components in sync.

Pricing for Servoy is a bit complex: Developer licenses run $849 per seat, and then you have client licenses starting at $349 per user. The server is free with client licenses.