Yes, it works fine. Had some bugs at first but has been running smooth since. It took more time of course than using a existing system. But you will have more confidence of how things work in the program. And every time if you want to make some changes, you will always know where to start. Plus, the documentation of IB's Java API is pretty good. You would probably write the code without asking around.
I would look at OQ (open quant) or NT7 (ninja). NT7 is still beta and 6.5 is not good enough. So you know my decision...