The IBM Rational Application Developer 7 (RAD 7) IDE, based on Eclipse 3.3 doesn’t work out-of-the-box with Flex Builder 3. This is due to the IBM Java SDK using a different Xerces version then the one Flex Builder needs.
You’ll likely receive the following error:
java.lang.IllegalAccessError:
org.apache.xerces.util.XMLAttributesImpl$Attribute
Here is an easy guide to get you up and running quickly:
- Install RAD7
- Install Flex Builder 3
- At the end of the install, the installer will complain about not being able to automatically setup an Extension Location. Be sure to execute the given instructions manually
- Quit RAD7 if running
- Edit the eclipse.ini file in c:\Program Files\IBM\SDP70 (directory where you installed RAD7)
- Add the following line on a new line at the end of the file:
-Xbootclasspath/a:c:\progra~1\adobe\flexbu~1\sdks\3.0.0\lib\xercesImpl.jar
Restart RAD7 and open the Flex Development perspective to start developing the next-gen Flex app 
August 28th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
That’s a dumb workaround. Xerces is an XML parser which is used by everything under RAD 7.0. By adding this as a -Xbootclasspath pointing to Adobe’s own version of Xerces you risk the potential of breaking other plugins or other aspects of RAD.
September 1st, 2008 at 1:48 pm
The workaround is not perfect indeed but I didn’t notice any side effects with using the Flex bundled xercesImpl.jar though.
September 17th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
hi
i follow you step and also doesn’t work out-of-the-box with Flex Builder 3.
thx.
best regards
kimti
December 9th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Hey Wim,
Why on your right mind would you add other stuff to that already over-bloated beast that is RAD 7 ? [I had to suffer through it enough to know
]
I use the Adobe Flexbuilder 3 as a separate install – less RAM being eaten.
What advantages do you see to RAD 7 for Flex dev ?
December 9th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Hi Philippe,
I’m doing this because then everything is in one place (together with the projects Java code (EAR project, WAR project, Java code)).
Also I thought a RAD instance and a FlexBuilder instances of Eclipse also eat a lot of mem. (of which I have only 1GB of on that system…)
Wim
August 21st, 2009 at 11:57 am
Did you try the new Galileo Eclipse release yet?
August 21st, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Yes, I’ve tried running Flex Builder 3.0.2 with Eclipse 3.5… but it doesn’t work. There are few bugreports on Adobe’s site, where they say they’ll post workaround to get it running.
They also said that no new Flexbuilder 3.x will be released anymore. Flash Builder 4 beta does work with Eclipse 3.5 though!
August 13th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
hello,
i follow you step and also doesn’t work out-of-the-box with Flex Builder 3.
regards
jitran
October 1st, 2010 at 1:21 pm
I thought a RAD instance and a FlexBuilder instances of Eclipse also eat a lot of mem. (of which I have only 1GB of on that system