JDeveloper 11g and SoaSuite 11g: a tight combination

I remember the first release of BPEL Process Manager in the Oracle Application Server architecture. It was 10.1.2. Before that there was a first global available version (I believe it was called version 2.0). The 10.1.2 release came with a developer install with a very specific version of JDeveloper with the BPEL designer. From 10.1.3 and onwards, the SoaSuite (BPEL,ESB) designers were add-ons. The idea was that with every JDeveloper you could perform SoaSuite-development. But the advice to keep up the JDeveloper version with the SoaSuite version was kept (use JDeveloper 10.1.3.5 with SoaSuite 10.1.3.5).

This week I started preparing the OPN Bootcamp on SoaSuite 11g, that I'm to give in january (from 12th to 14th in De Meern, The Netherlands, see here). I got a prepared Virtual Machine with SoaSuite 11g installed. But it is a one-cpu 2GB VM (that I could give it more memory of course), and I would like to have my sources outside the VM. So for performance and development convenience I choose to install a seperate JDeveloper.

Of course I went for the latest version (11.1.1.2, downloaded here). But I got connection failures at configuring the Application Server connection. Struggled with it for a few hours (in between struggling with another problem, though), disabling firewalls, googling around. But no clues.

This morning with fresh curage I thought:lets not be too stubborn and try the suggested version of JDeveloper (11.1.1.1). The Soa-Infra version was: v11.1.1.0.0 - 11.1.1.1.0, according to the soa-infra page. The great thing about Jdeveloper 11g is that the studio-download is about 1GB. And having installed it, you have to download the SOA Composite editor separately via the Help>Update-functionality. It's about an addtional 230MB. And I found JDeveloper 10.1.3.x with about 700MB large already (Soa-designers included)!

But turns out to solve the problem. So no backwards-compatibility. Tight version coupling.
So if you run into connection problems between Jdeveloper 11g and SoaSuite, just check the version numbers.

Oh, and if you like to join the OPN Bootcamp in january, check out the enablement pages.
The course can be given in English if required.