Save (most of) your changes to the JDeveloper IDE

Under some circumstances you may need to rename or remove your system11.x.x.x folder to overcome errors with the IDE which can’t be solved otherwise. I blogged about this How to find and reset the system11.x.x.x folder for a JDeveloper installation.
However, this means that you loose all of the changes you made to IDE, e.g. connections to DBs, code templates and many more.
In the current version or JDeveloper there is no feature to save all the changes you made with a simple export or click on a button. An ER for this is about to be filed.

Until we see this ER implemented you need to store the changes you made yourself. First of all we need to know all the places were changes can be saved in a file or exported into a file. I put all those files under source control. This makes them available for other developers in the same team and allows to hold different configurations for different or the same JDeveloper version. This blog post lists all the places I know. If you know any other place, please drop a comment so that I can include it here.
To my knowledge the locations below are working for all JDeveloper version from 11.1.1.x up to the current version 11.1.2.1.0.

There are three locations where you can save your changes

1. Recource Palette
2. Preferences
3. File menu

Lets start with the Resource Palette:

Resource Palette 1

This will bring up

Resource Palette 2

This dialog allows you to save all the connection to DBs and Weblogic Servers you have defined as well as Catalogs. All you have to do is to specify a path and a file name to store the information.

Next are the Preferences. Here are a couple of places where you can export your changes.
Audit Profiles:

Audit Profiles

Code Editor – Code Style

Code Editor - Code Style

Code Editor – Code Templates

Code Editor - Code Templates

Code Editor – Syntax Colors

Code Editor - Syntax Colors

Database – SQL Formatter

Database - SQL Formatter

Database – SQL Formatter – Oracle Formatting

SQL Formatter - Oracle Formatting

Database – SQL Formatter – Other Vendors (each vendor can be saved)

Database - SQL Formatter - Other Vendors

Shortcut Keys

Versioning – Comment Templates

Versioning - Comment Templates

Finally the ‘File’ menu which mainly allows to export the connections to the source control system you use

File - Export