Is there an eclipse plugin for jdo which has a designer tab and a source tab like the xml editor?
The designer tab would have a table for me to key in all the fields, each row per field, with columns defining if that field is String, persistent, etc.
Then I flip over to source tab and, voila, is the java class source.
Or something like dat, even if it does not run on eclipse.
JDO is very standard pattern and if I have an extensive schema, a jdo designer would make life easier.
JDO is indeed a standard but, from an adoption point of view, it's a big failure. Hence JPA which is where things happen now and which is attracting much more attention.
Anyway, not sure this is what you're looking for but did you check EclipseJDO?
This Eclipse plugin makes easy and fast to develop transaction applications in Java using JDO drivers. This tool integrates the JDO enhance command in JDT building process. It gives the developer the necessary toolbox and wizards to make a Java application JDO persistent just by checking boxes, completely integrated within the development life cycle within Eclipse. Of course, it targets to support all JDO compilant drivers.
DataNucleus has an Eclipse Plugin too but I'm not sure it does much more things. Maybe someone from DataNucleus will confirm this.
Oh, BTW, good luck with your travel through the Java galaxy ;)
DataNucleus has an Eclipse plugin, and allows simple generation of package.jdo or persistence.xml files. There are other offerings such as Javelin that can generate JDO classes from UML. The EclipseJDO plugin was never developed beyond 2003 IIRC.
As has been said before, JPA is only for RDBMS whereas JDO isn't.
You can also make use of JPA tools to generate classes with JPA metadata (e.g Eclipse Dali plugin) and then use the JPA annotated classes with JDO persistence with DataNucleus ... since JDO as a standard accepts JDO and JPA metadata.