Eclipse has been successful and now must face the challenge of continuing on this success, said Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions.
"I suppose the larger question is whether the success Eclipse has had so far is going to be continuing and repeatable," Gardner said. For companies with an established business model, an open source model could be a challenge to adapt to, he said. Startups, however, do not face this obstacle, said Gardner, citing Genuitec, which has built a business selling its MyEclipse IDE.
Milinkovich briefly joked about conspiracy theories surrounding Eclipse, citing one in which participants are battling "Samurai Burger," which is a code name for Sun. Although Sun invented the Java programming language that has formed a technology basis for Eclipse, Sun has not participated in Eclipse. Sun rival IBM founded Eclipse.
Eclipse proponents presenting at the show on Thursday discussed projects slated for June 2007 release. That is when "Europa," which features a coordinated release of multiple Eclipse projects, is due. Europa is the follow-up to Callisto.
Details of the next major release of the Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP) project were aired. WTP provides tools for developing standards-based, multi-tier Java Web applications. It features tools for HTML, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), JavaScript, XML, Web services and other technologies.
Due to be a part of Europa, WTP 2.0 is expected to accommodate Web 2.0 concepts and Java Enterprise Edition 5, according to IBM Rational's Arthur Ryman, who is Eclipse Web Tools lead at the company. WTP 2.0 will incorporate the Eclipse AJAX Tools Framework as well as Eclipse's JavaServer Faces Tools and Dali projects. Dali features tools compliant with the Java Persistence Architecture, for persisting of objects into relational databases. The Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 specification is supported in Dali.
Technologies from Eclipse PHP Tools Project, including improved Apache Web server support, and the SOA Tools Platform project, which has improved Web services support, also will be in WTP 2.0. Overlap with the Eclipse Data Tools Project will be eliminated in version 2.0.
In the meantime, WTP version 1.5.1 and 1.5.2 are expected in late-September and February as maintenance releases to fix bugs in Callisto.
The SOA Tools Platform also is expected to be released in June 2007, although it is likely to be offered separately from Europa, said Iona Distinguished Engineer Oisin Hurley, who is participating in the project. The group developing the platform must first coordinate the various technologies within the platform itself before it moves on to synchronizing it with Europa. The Europa release is to feature no clashing amongst component projects in areas such as naming conventions and versioning, Hurley said.
"We're trying to make the actual development of SOA simpler," with the SOA project, through integrations of multiple technologies within it, said Hurley.
Also, a preview release of the Eclipse Rich AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) Platform is expected in a couple of weeks, said Jochen Krause, CEO of Innoopract, and also the lead on the project. The platform features a runtime intended to enable developers to build rich AJAX-enabled Web applications by using the Eclipse development model, plug-ins and a Java-only API.
The general release of the platform will be part of Europa, Krause said.
Jim Russell, director of App Development Tools for the Lotus Software group at IBM, acknowledged at the conference that the company has an interest in the Ruby programming lanuage but no product plans, at least not at the moment. "We've got some internal projects experimenting with Ruby," Russell said.
"It's one of the technologies that people are talking about these days," so IBM is taking a look at it, Russell said.
This whitepaper explains the terminology and concepts behind Data Replication technologies and establishes some sizing rules through worked examples. Learn the new paradigm in disaster tolerance—protect data anywhere.
Download now »
Server virtualization is a popular option for dealing with mounting datacenter costs. Another equally promising approach is the use of an Application Delivery Controller. Citrix NetScaler provides a low-cost way for organizations to reduce their server count and accrue cost savings from a reduction in space, cooling, power and personnel.
Download now »
The emergence of WLANs has created a new breed of security threats to enterprise networks.
Included in HP ProCurve WLAN solutions is security technology that alleviates threats from WLANs through:
* Monitoring wireless activity inside and out of the enterprise
* Classifying WLAN transmissions into harmful and harmless
* Preventing transmissions that pose a security threat to the enterprise network
* Locating participating devices for physical remediation
Effectively address data protection challenges, implementing solutions that help store and protect business–critical data while cutting costs and improving efficiency and reliability.
Download now »
Sign up to receive InfoWorld Resource Alerts
Recommend This
