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Eclipse Tools Enter a Crowded Market

Analysis of News Events
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For several months, IBM has been quietly releasing reports that indicate how it will migrate users of its existing WebSphere and VisualAge development tools to new tools based on the Eclipse open-source development workbench. This summer, that migration will begin in earnest for many of those developers, including those who work on the iSeries.

To understand how IBM's tool families are about to change, let's start by studying the products that the computer giant is building on the Eclipse workbench. IBM is rolling out all of these products under the WebSphere Studio brand name, even though many of its non-Eclipse products share this brand. IBM has already announced and shipped two product lines within the new brand: WebSphere Studio Site Developer (WSSD) and WebSphere Studio Application Developer (WSAD). High-end Enterprise offerings, as well as entry-level offerings, are also on the drawing boards.

http://www.mcpressonline.com/articles/images/2002/05-20-02%20EclipseV300.png

[Source: IBM Corporation]

Figure 1: The WebSphere Studio Product Family

 

As Figure 1 indicates, WSSD and WSAD share many of the same capabilities, most of which IBM is delivering as plug-ins to the Eclipse workbench. The biggest difference between the product lines is WSAD's ability to develop and test Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs). Both tools can generate Java applets and servlets as well as JavaServer Pages (JSPs).

The two product lines also differ in the application servers they support. While WSSD supports both WebSphere Application Server 4.0 (WAS 4.0) and the Jakarta Tomcat server, WSAD only targets WAS 4.0. Both WSSD and WSAD will support WAS 5.0 when IBM ships it later this summer. Be aware, however, that WAS 5.0 will likely require new releases of WSSD and WSAD for full support. This is because WAS 5.0 supports the EJB 2.0 specification, while the current Eclipse SDK only supports EJB 1.1. The Eclipse Consortium is preparing an SDK that supports EJB 2.0; once it delivers it, IBM will likely refresh WSSD and WSAD with support for the new SDK.

For many iSeries developers, WSSD will be more than adequate for their immediate development efforts. IBM is positioning WSSD as the follow-on to WebSphere Studio Professional Edition, the non-Eclipse Web development tool that comes packaged with WebSphere Development Tools for iSeries. In addition, WSSD's Java IDE gives it much of the same functionality as VisualAge for Java Professional Edition, another tool in WebSphere Development Tools for iSeries. As such, it is likely that WSSD will replace both of these tools in the next release of WebSphere Development Tools for iSeries. IBM will likely announce and ship this release sometime this summer. At the same time, IBM may also announce an Eclipse-based version of Enterprise Toolkit for AS/400, which provides the Java IDE with access to iSeries functions and data.

If some of your company's programmers are developing EJBs using VisualAge for Java Enterprise Edition, consider migrating them to WSAD. Be aware, however, that WSAD still lacks some of the capabilities that VAJ Enterprise Edition developers are using today, such as the Persistence Builder and Data Access Beans. Given this fact, migrating from VAJ Enterprise Edition to WSAD requires a careful examination of your existing development requirements. Be sure to consult some of the references that follow this article for further information and advice.

Will IBM "Eclipse" Sun and Microsoft?

While WSSD and WSAD offer significant benefits to developers, their greater value lies in the fact that they will work seamlessly with Eclipse-based products from many vendors. As I explained last week, Eclipse is an initiative that IBM and other tools vendors are using to advance an open-source development platform. As such, Eclipse and the tools that vendors build on it won't succeed unless the development platform wins broad support from many vendors.

As Eclipse seeks to gain that support, it faces big challenges from two competitive development platforms: Microsoft's Visual Studio.NET (VS.NET) and Sun's NetBeans project. Like Eclipse, these platforms provide team-based development environments with consistent interfaces. They are also highly extensible via third-party plug-ins or modules, and they're attracting the support of commercial developers and tool vendors.

These similarities attest to the fact that all three platforms are efforts to control the standards to which developers build software and, by extension, to control where that software resides. Microsoft is using VS.NET to get developers to incorporate .NET-based object frameworks in their applications and host those applications on Windows. Sun is offering NetBeans as an open source alternative to VS.NET that tightly adheres to the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) standards and thereby creates applications that run on J2EE application servers.

While Eclipse also targets J2EE, it reflects IBM's interest in expanding the standard to embrace technologies it is embedding in its own middleware, including Web services and XML-based connectors to legacy systems. Indeed, some IBM executives think of Eclipse as a superset of NetBeans that offers greater functionality across more technology platforms. This infuriates Sun, which claims that Eclipse is an IBM effort to take over the Java standard. Sun points out that NetBeans, unlike Eclipse, uses the Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT) and Swing object classes that are part of the J2EE specification. By contrast, Eclipse uses the Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) and JFace classes, neither of which are part of the Java standard. IBM retorts that SWT and JFace are faster and more flexible, that many Java tools vendors embed non-J2EE technologies in their products, and that they have already submitted SWT and JFace to the Java Community Process for inclusion in the J2EE specifications.

Despite the public acrimony, there's word on the street that IBM and Sun are privately talking about merging the Eclipse and NetBeans platforms or, at the least, establishing a working relationship with each other. Clearly, the cooler heads in both camps understand the value of achieving a resolution. They realize that if they do not, their failure could strengthen Microsoft's hand in setting development standards for Web-based software.

With competition rising among the three development platforms, the coming months will be a time of decision for many software vendors and programmers, including those who work on the iSeries. So what does your development team intend to do? Send me an email with your game plan and let me know the reasons for your choice. Then, stay tuned for further updates on the rapidly changing development tools market.

Lee Kroon is a Senior Industry Analyst for Andrews Consulting Group, a firm that helps mid-sized companies manage business transformation through technology. You can reach him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Additional Reading

All About the IBM WebSphere Studio Family of Development Tools
This site provides an excellent overview of WSSD, WSAD, and their roles in IBM's Eclipse-based product line.

WebSphere Developer Domain--Studio Zone
Here's the best place to get detailed information about WSSD, WSAD, and other WebSphere Studio products.

WebSphere Studio Family Overview
Head here to get general overviews of the entire WebSphere Studio line, including Eclipse and non-Eclipse products.

Transitioning to the New WebSphere Studio Development Products
This page directs you to a wealth of documents that discuss WSSD and WSAD migration issues.

NetBeans.Org Web Site
Point your browser here to learn more about this open-source competitor to Eclipse.

Visual Studio.NET Home Page
Start your exploration of Microsoft's VS.NET platform at this site.

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