The market-share leader among Java IDEs is unquestionably Eclipse, the platform freely available from the Eclipse Foundation.
Its success stems from several factors: the foundation’s vendor independence, its considerable ability to forge partnerships,
and a key product design decision.
Genuitec MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench 5.0
Genuiec, myeclipseide.com/
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 Very Good 8.2 |
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| criteria |
score |
weight |
| Ease-of-use |
8 |
30% |
 |
| Features |
8 |
30% |
|
| Integration |
9 |
20% |
|
| Performance |
7 |
10% |
|
| Value |
9 |
10% |
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|
Cost:
Subscription basis: Standard Edition $31.75 per seat, per year; Professional Edition $52.95 per seat, per year. Volume discounts
for more than 50 seats
Platforms:
Java running on Windows, Linux, MacOS X
Bottom Line:
MyEclipse 5.0 is an impressive, integrated collection of plug-ins that greatly extends the functionality of Eclipse at a superb
price. However, the broad set of tools needs greater depth -- many plug-ins lack advanced features.
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About our Reviews and Scoring Methodology
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Just before the 2004 release of Version 3.0 of the IDE, IBM -- then-owner of Eclipse -- decided to migrate the platform to
a new plug-in architecture called OSGi (Open Services Gateway initiative). The OSGi framework provides the automotive industry
with a simple, reliable software backplane for plugging in modules to customize features of various car models on the market
today. By choosing OSGi, Eclipse gave developers an elegant and well-designed plug-in interface. Since that release, hundreds
of plug-ins have come to market and greatly expanded the capabilities of Eclipse.
Genuitec has been particularly active in porting and developing these plug-ins for Eclipse, and it just released Version 5.0
of its signature product, MyEclipse. This productized collection of plug-ins smoothly expands Eclipse functionality at a competitive
price. I found few things to complain about, save for the fact that many of the plug-ins provide only basic functionality.
Subscription Curiosities
InfoWorld reviewed Version 3.83 of MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench in early 2005 and found it to be a useful, well integrated set of plug-ins. Back then,
a developer could re-create the package by downloading the individual plug-ins and importing them into Eclipse.
Today, that’s no longer true. Most of the functionality available today is developed in-house or ported by engineers at Genuitec,
so the plug-ins are not commonly available from other sources. In fact, Genuitec relies on this added value to distinguish
its products from the greater universe of Eclipse plug-ins.
The new version of Workbench ships as an annual subscription with two levels: the standard edition at $29.95 plus a weird
6 percent handling fee (rather odd for a downloadable product), or the Professional Edition at $49.95 (plus that 6 percent
fee) per year. Most developers will want the full functionality of the Professional Edition, which is what I review here.
MyEclipse subscriptions follow a mainframe-style model: If the subscription is not renewed, many of the added functions cease
working. You can still use the basic IDE, but MyEclipse will pop up a steady stream of dialog boxes asking you to renew. Given
the low price of renewing, one can live with these annoyances, but I’d much prefer a subscription model where you can keep
using the product you paid for -- you simply don’t get new releases or tech support until you renew.
Java, Java Everywhere
MyEclipse traditionally has been oriented toward enterprise Java, and the 5.0 release maintains this philosophy. One of the
key additions is a UML editor, which supports the “big six” UML diagrams: use-case, class, collaboration, state, activity,
and deployment. The editor has solid, if unremarkable, functionality and can generate code from class diagrams and likewise
class diagrams from source code. It also can export diagrams in industry-standard XMI format. The package adds a basic image
editor, too, although it’s more suited for touch-ups than for drawing an image from scratch.
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