The Beans Development Kit

Version 1.0 - July '98

Welcome to the Beans Development Kit (BDK)

See BDK changes for changes since previous releases of the BDK.

The Beans Development Kit (BDK) is intended to support the early development of JavaBeans^TM components and to act as a standard reference base for both bean developers and tool vendors. The BDK provides a reference bean container, the "BeanBox" and a variety of reusable example source code (in the demo and beanbox subdirectories) for use by both bean developers and tools developers.

The BDK is not intended for use by application developers, nor is it intended to be a full-fledged application development environment. Instead application developers should check the various Java application development environments supporting JavaBeans.

System Requirements

This BDK 1.0 release requires you to have installed the Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.1. We recommend using JDK 1.1.4 (or later) as this fixes some GUI related bugs.

The BDK is qualified for Solaris 2.5, Windows 95, and Windows NT 4.0. However the BDK is "pure Java" and should run on any JDK 1.1 enabled system.

Licensing Information

Check the BDK Licensing Terms for terms and conditions governing the use and redistribution of the BDK.

The BeanBox test container. This allows you to test out your new beans against a reference container, and also acts an example of how to build a bean container.
We provide a dozen example beans which can run in the BeanBox and demonstrate various bean behaviour.
We provide a variety of reference source code.
Makefile information.

And at our web site...

There is also additional information at our web site, including

A tutorial explaining the main JavaBeans1.0 concepts using the BeanBox.
Information on professional development tools supporting JavaBeans.
The JavaBeans specification.
Links to related specifications
A general JavaBeans FAQ

Reporting problems.

If you encounter problems while running the BeanBox or while using the java.beans classes, please see the JavaSoft "Bug Report" page for instructions on how to submit a bug report.

Keeping in Touch

The JavaBeans Advisor is our monthly developer newsletter that provides up to the minute news and advice for JavaBeans developers. To receive the JavaBeans Advisor via e-mail, subscribe to the beans-info mailing list.

We maintain a low-volume mailing list for regular information about JavaBeans updates and events. To subscribe send email to:

LISTSERV@JAVASOFT.COM

In the body of the message, type:

SUBSCRIBE BEANS-INFO

Other resources for keeping in touch with the developments in the JavaBeans community, including a newsgroup, are available at our web site.

Java, JavaBeans, and JavaSoft are trademarks of Sun Microsystems Inc.