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Eclipse: An IDE for Tomorrow?

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Does anyone remember IBM's Systems Application Architecture (SAA)? In the late 1980s, IBM revealed a grand engineering scheme to pull together all its various hardware and software offerings so that developers could work from a single contextual platform to create integrated applications across the entire IBM computing spectrum. The effort was hailed as the end-all and be-all of systems integration, and indeed it nearly proved to be the end-all of IBM itself. SAA was swept away during IBM's near-death encounter during the early 1990s. Why SAA failed within IBM will remain one of those odd little footnotes in the history of a great corporation that it would sooner forget.

But the legacy of that vision of integration lives on in Eclipse project--an open-source consortium designed to bring integration to the rapidly diversifying world of software platforms. The proof of IBM's commitment to this open-source movement was announced last week (May 10, 2000) when IBM introduced a toolset built on the Eclipse open-source platform to support integration of WebSphere, Lotus Domino, CrossWorlds, DB2, Tivoli, MQ, and the iSeries. These new tools extend the WebSphere Studio family of application development products and unify IBM's complete middleware portfolio around a single development platform.

What Is the Eclipse Project?

Eclipse is an open-source software development project dedicated to providing a robust, full-featured, commercial-quality industry platform for the development of highly integrated tools. The project is composed of three subprojects: the Eclipse platform itself, Java development tools (JDT), and Plug-in development environment (PDE). The concept is to enable the widest range of tool builders to build best-of-breed integrated tools. But the greater challenge is to provide a platform in which the tools created by different tool builders can be combined by users to tailor and extend the overall environment to meet unknown, yet-to-be-described needs. According to the Eclipse project mission statement, "The mission of the Eclipse project is to adapt and evolve the Eclipse platform and associated tools to meet the needs of the tool-building community and its users, so that the vision of Eclipse as an industry platform is realized."

The Eclipse Platform

The Eclipse platform is designed for building integrated development environments (IDEs) that can be used to create applications as diverse as Web sites, embedded Java programs, C++ programs, and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs) . IBM calls Eclipse "an IDE for anything, and for nothing in particular." It's built on a "plug-in" architectural model, allowing a variety of sub-modules to be directly connected to the programmer's main IDE workbench.

http://www.mcpressonline.com/articles/images/2002/Eclipse%20%96%20An%20IDE%20for%20TomorrowV400.png

As the developer plugs in more modules, the environment is extended to perform an increasingly complex array of integrating functions, all working in a consistent and comprehensive manner.

What Is Eclipse.org?

The success or failure of any open IDE at this evolutionary juncture in application development requires more than the backing of any single vendor. Even IBM, with software offerings on every major operating system, can't vouchsafe that its investment in an IDE will be realized unless it is widely accepted by all the tool makers in the industry. Indeed, one of the failures of IBM's SAA initiative is that IBM held the standards too closely and treated them in a proprietary manner. That's why the Eclipse platform relies upon a consortium of software-development-tool vendors for success. Eclipse.org is exactly such a consortium--a community formed to create better development environments and product integration.

The Eclipse.org consortium is composed of a broad, twelve-member board, which includes Borland, Fujitsu, IBM, MERANT, QNX Software Systems, Rational Software, RedHat, Serena Software, SuSE, Sybase, TogetherSoft, and WebGain, in addition to more than 175 tool vendors who have built or plan to build tools on the Eclipse platform.

IBM's WebSphere Studio Tools Announcement

All of the new WebSphere Studio tools that IBM announced last week will plug into the Eclipse platform, extending the platform to

  • Lotus Domino--These modules should help developers create a "blend" of WebSphere and Domino applications by connecting Domino document databases into WebSphere Studio. Using the tools, a developer will be able to build JavaServer Pages (JSPs) that access elements of the Domino database, such as views and forms.
  • DB2--Through DB2 Everyplace, the modules will enable developers to easily build applications for mobile devices, utilizing the DB2 Everyplace mobile relational database.
  • Tivoli--The modules will provide an easy-to-use tool that enables developers to monitor applications running on Windows, UNIX, Linux, and IBM eServer iSeries.
  • MQ--The modules will enable the plug in of WebSphere MQ Integrator Broker to provide consistency across integration projects and speed up the development and deployment process.
  • IBM eServer iSeries--iSeries applications developed through WebSphere Development Studio for iSeries will be integrated using Eclipse to provide an environment for both traditional and Web-based applications.
  • CrossWorlds--These modules will provide both administrative and development support for business process integration, the development of process collaborations, and CrossWorlds systems management.

In addition to these tools, IBM says that next month it will make available a beta version of WebSphere Studio Enterprise Developer. The Enterprise Developer is the first tool to enable enterprise developers working with Java, COBOL, and PL/1 languages, as well as developers not skilled in Java, to easily integrate with or move into a Java environment.

Will Eclipse Succeed?

IBM says that more than a million copies of the Eclipse SDK have been already downloaded from www.eclipse.org in the last six months. According to IBM, developers using WebSphere Studio will be able to use Eclipse as a single, unified "portal-like" programming environment for developing, testing, performance tuning, and debugging software. Developers can customize their application development environments for specific projects with consistent capabilities and flexibility. IBM hopes that these tools will reach the industry's widest range of developer communities, spanning collaborative back-office applications, wireless, midmarket business development, and enterprises integrating Java with existing applications.

By using the Eclipse-based tools, developers can create higher-quality applications in far less time because they can avoid the cumbersome task of integrating incompatible tools and eliminate the time-consuming process of developing applications in multiple development environments.

But it's still too early to determine if Eclipse will succeed where other attempts at IDE integration has failed. Nonetheless, since Eclipse is itself Java-based and is an open-source product, its chances are greater than those that have been developed in the past. Unlike Microsoft's C# and .Net environments, Eclipse may be the next step in providing a complete strategy for developers in a world where software development standards continue to evolve faster than the tools that software vendors can provide.

A white paper entitled Eclipse Platform: Technical Overview by Object Technology International, Inc. is available at www.eclipse.org along with other information about the Eclipse consortium.

IBM says that the WebSphere Studio plug-in for Tivoli and WebSphere Business Components Composer are currently available and that the iSeries plug-in will be available in July. Other modules will be available starting in 4Q02.

Thomas M. Stockwell is the Editor in Chief of MC Press, LLC. He has written extensively about program development, project management, IT management, and IT consulting and has been a frequent contributor to many midrange periodicals. He has authored numerous white papers for iSeries solutions providers. His most recent consulting assignments have been as a Senior Industry Analyst working with IBM on the iSeries, on the mid-market, and specifically on WebSphere brand positioning. He welcomes your comments about this or other articles and can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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