NetBeans lauched NetBeans 5.5 Enterprise Pack, preview release (read it as a early access release). The main goal of 5.5 is Java EE 5 support, so with that preview release, Sun bundled UML, BPEL and other EE things.

Now, the 5.5 beta release, with Enterprise Pack/Profiler/Mobility 5.5 beta is available too. First, download and install the NetBeans 5.5 IDE. Then install the Enterprise Pack 5.5 beta.

I will not write about all the 5.5 goodies, see Geertjan, blog to know more about it, or read the annoucement

So, lets see whats new:

• Subversion support
  
  SubVersion support is available at Update Center
  
  
  SubVersion support requires a native subversion installation. Mine was 1.2.x. Then, when NetBeans started, a warning prompting at my screen.
  
  
  
  
  so I need to upgrade it. As I use Mandriva Linux, the packages are RPM, so it was easy to download and install them from the rpm repository. See the required packages.
  
  

  subversion-1.3.1-1mdk.i586.rpm
  subversion-server-1.3.1-1mdk.i586.rpm
  libsvn0-1.3.1-1mdk.i586.rpm
  openssl-0.9.8b-1mdk.i586.rpm
  libopenssl0.9.8-0.9.8b-1mdk.i586.rpm
  libapr-util1-1.2.7-3mdk.i586.rpm
  libapr1-1.2.7-1mdk.i586.rpm
  libneon0.26-0.26.0-4mdk.i586.rpm
  libpq4-8.1.3-1mdk.i586.rpm
  rootcerts-20051111-1mdk.noarch.rpm
  

  Sure, there are someone out there will say "Grab the sources and compile it". Well I leave those boring tasks to mandriva guys
  
  SubVersion support recognized files previously versioned and changes made to them. See at the file tab and at project window.
  
  
  
  
  SubVersion context menu
  
  
  
  SubVersion support inserts an small icon on the project icon
  
• Persistence (JSR 220) support
  
  The Java Persistence API (JAP) is available at Library Manager. Its based on TopLink from Oracle
  
  
  File template for the Persistence POJOs and Persistence Unit
  
• Tomcat 5.5.16
  
  
  See the Apache Tomcat changelogs, in case you want to see the differences between 5.5.9 and 5.5.16
• The AJAX demos works with tomcat
  
  Its possible to run AJAX demos on tomcat. With NetBeans 5.0, its was need to configure JSF libraries and other small tricks.

The NetBeans main page changed also, to welcome the young (but powerful) brother

I didn't do any test/evaluation of Enterprise Pack (SOA and UML), so I cannot speak of it. The JPA support is good, althought I didn't test much of it.