Source: LinuxWorld
BEA Systems and the Eclipse Foundation are making their marks at the JavaOne conference this week, focusing on JVMs and open source projects, respectively.
BEA Systems is preparing to take its JRockit Java Virtual Machine to new platforms. By the end of this year, you'll start seeing it come out on other processors, such as Sparc, said Mark Carges, BEA CTO, during an interview at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco.
Currently running on Windows and Linux on Intel and AMD chips, plans call for porting the JVM to the Solaris OS on Sparc, AIX on PowerPC, and HP-UX on Intel. The Sparc-Solaris version is expected by the end of 2005, with the others to follow.
JRockit has been available as a free download. BEA hopes to monetize the JVM by selling operational and diagnostic tools, such as memory-leak detectors that function with JRockit on top of BEA's commercial WebLogic middleware platform, Carges said.
BEA also anticipates having JRockit participate in a stack that would feature WebLogic on top of JRockit, which would reside above "hypervisor" software for running device drivers. Beneath that would be Intel's planned virtualization chips that would support multiple OSes on a single piece of silicon, Carges said.
The stack is expected to offer superior performance, he added. BEA is calling this project "Bare Metal."
Read the complete article at LinuxWorld. . .
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
BEA, Eclipse make marks at JavaOne
BEA heads further down open source, Eclipse paths
From ZDNet.com
Like every other major software vendor that wants a piece of the Java action, or has a piece of the Java action to protect, BEA is another company that’s looking to manage its presence in an increasingly open source world while hoping to preserve the once lush pastures of the old and tired commercial software model. Like Oracle, which announced at the show that it will now give start giving its integrated development environment JDeveloper away for free, BEA already gives away its IDE known as Workshop. Whereas JDeveloper remains on the same Oracle technology-based foundation it has always been, BEA announced earlier this year that WorkShop would be ported to run on the Eclipse Foundation’s Eclipse Framework – the same framework behind the Eclipse IDE. According to BEA's CTO Mark Carges, the newly found synchronicity between Eclipse and BEA’s WorkShop makes it easier to leverage a single plug-in architecture (something customers apparently requested) while at the same time making some quasi-open source plays in the Java community.
Go to the Blog. . .
Eclipse updates platform and projects
From The Register
The Eclipse Foundation has announced upgrades to its eight projects due during the next 30 days, while delivering updated tools to develop rich client applications.
The open source tools project has released Eclipse Platform 3.1, featuring improvements in application development and scalability for the latest Java platforms.
Eclipse Platform 3.1 provides tools and wizards to create and deploy Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) 1.4 applications, along with support for features in Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE) 5.0 such as refactoring and generics that can help speed construction of Java applications by developers.
Eclipse said leading J2EE vendors like BEA Systems, Borland, IBM, JBoss and the ObjectWeb Consortium would use the Eclipse tools and wizards in their own J2EE tools.
Read complete article. . .
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Borland Suite Fully Integrated With Eclipse
From InternetNews.com
Software development vendor Borland has fully integrated its modeling software suite on top of Eclipse with Together and will release a version of the software in late August, officials announced Monday.
The announcement of Together 2006 for Eclipse, made at the start of the JavaOne conference in San Francisco this week, marks the first time individual components in the Together line -- Architect, Designer and Developer -- will be used on top of the Eclipse framework.
Together is the modeling, or visual design, backbone behind Borland's software delivery optimization (SDO) initiative. It breaks down modeling requirements into three roles: architects, for overall project management; designers who create the UML-based (define) models; and developers.
To date, Borland has sold a blended product for Eclipse users, Together Edition for Eclipse, incorporating all three developer roles. The company also sells versions of its Together line for its JBuilder IDE and Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET (define).
Marc Brown, Borland director of product marketing, said two de facto frameworks have emerged in the development world and a full version based on Eclipse was made in light of developer needs.
"What we've really done, from a strategic point of view, is we looked at how to help out our customers from a pure modeling perspective and thought there were two strategic platforms to move to," he said. "We need to be on Eclipse and we need to be on the Microsoft side."
Read complete article. . .
Eclipse Foundation Reaches 100 Members; NEC is the 100th Organization to Join Eclipse
From BusinessWire.com
The Eclipse Foundation, an open source community committed to the implementation of a universal development platform, today announced that its membership has reached the milestone of 100 member organizations. NEC is the 100th organization to join the Eclipse Foundation and will join as an Add-in Provider member. NEC plans to introduce new Eclipse-based tools and plug-ins for their C++ and Java development environments.
Companies like NEC choose to build commercial products in Eclipse's open source-based ecosystem, because it is an effective and profitable business model. The milestone of 100 members in the Eclipse Foundation reflects the growth and increasing interest software organizations have in commercially adopting community-developed Eclipse open source technologies. With each new member the Eclipse Foundation continues to strengthen its global outreach in the software industry.
"NEC's Systems Integration and Embedded Solutions primarily develop in Java and C/C++," said Nik Kishinoue, senior manager, software engineering division, NEC Corporation. "By using Eclipse and providing a common IDE across these two solutions, we expect to improve our overall developer productivity. In addition, the broad selection of Eclipse technology, including testing and performance tools and UML editors brings state-of-the-art technology to our developer desktop."
"The growth the Eclipse Foundation has seen in 2005 has been tremendous," said Mike Milinkovich, executive director, Eclipse Foundation. "This momentum shows the commercial viability for open source-based development by ISVs and platform vendors and is a positive indicator for the future potential of the Eclipse community."
NEC has also joined the Eclipse Japan Working Group, an organization focused on the issues of the Japanese and Asia-PAC regions. As part of this Working Group, NEC plans to encourage Japanese Eclipse community activism within Eclipse and Japanese translation of documents for Eclipse.
Read complete Press Release. . .
Smaller outfits look to Java
From CNET News.com
Smaller companies looking to crack into the Java marketplace detailed their plans at the JavaOne conference this week.
Nexaweb released version 4 of its namesake software for building so-called rich Internet applications, or Web applications with sophisticated graphics. The enhancements to the company's Java-based tool are aimed at making rich client applications more reliable for medium to large corporations, according to the company.
Nexaweb 4.0 adds a plug-in system for third-party add-ons as well as messaging software, which runs on PC clients and servers, to ensure delivery of data using Web services protocols.
"Computation happens on the client side, but all the security and administration are centrally managed from the server side," said Coach Wei, chief technology officer of Nexaweb, which competes with other rich-client software companies, such as Laszlo Systems and Macromedia.
The Eclipse open-source foundation released an update to its own rich-client software on Monday, called version 3.1 of the Eclipse Rich Client Platform. Over the next month, Eclipse intends to release version 3.1 updates to its tools for building Java server programs and Web applications.
Read complete article. . .
Monday, June 27, 2005
Million Download Challenge for Eclipse 3.1
The Eclipse community has really come into its own in recent times. We are growing with leaps and bounds, not only in terms of the code that we ship but also our membership, be it companies or individual contributors. As a way to recognize the value of the community we've formed we'd like to do the following to celebrate the release of Eclipse 3.1.
It took roughly 60 days for us to ship 1 million copies of 3.0.2. We feel we can do better than this for 3.1. For every day less than 60 that it takes for us to reach our 1 millionth download, willing members of the Eclipse community will donate either time or money (as appropriate) to a charity of their choosing. For instance, if it takes us 20 days to reach 1 million then those pledging will donate 40 times (60 days less 20) whatever they've pledged.
The Eclipse community has thrived because of the support of its members. Let's not forget that we're all members of a much bigger community that can also use our support. We encourage all interested members, be they companies, developers or other contributors to add their name to the list below along with what they're pledging. You may do this by clicking the Edit link on the right hand side of your screen. If you'd like to have your name added to this list but cannot modify this page yourself please contact millionDownloadChallenge@pookzilla.com with your info.
Take me there. . .
Rich Client Platform is Eclipse's JavaOne headline act
From ZDNet.com
Later today, the Eclipse Foundation — the organization responsible for the oversight of the Eclipse integrated development environment (an IDE for deploying Java applications) is expected to make a series of announcements according to the organization's vice president of marketing Ian Skerrett. The audio version of the interview is available as an MP3 that can be downloaded or, if you’re already subscribed to ZDNet’s IT Matters series of audio podcasts, it will show up on your system or MP3 player automatically. See ZDNet’s podcasts: How to tune in.
Although the opening act for Eclipse at JavaOne will be the launch of version 3.1 of the Eclipse IDE, the news that everyone will probably be talking about is Eclipse's Rich Client Platform (RCP). In the interview Skerrett described the RCP like this:
We're moving beyond just development tools in developing a platform for end user applications. Let me give you and example. When I subscribe to different blogs with RSS feeds, I have an RSS newsreader that is actually built on top of Eclipse in Eclipse RCP. I'm not using it through a browser. I'm using it through a Windows application, a Windows application that gives me the look and feel that I want and it has nothing to do with the development tools. The announcement we're making this week is really the momentum we've seen around the Eclipse RCP and the new features and functionality that we brought into RCP. The key that we've been working on for RCP is two main focuses. One, to improve the tooling for creating rich client applications. So we've done a lot of work on the packaging and the branding which are very important if you're a company like SAS whose end user BI and analytic applications — they want it to look a SAS application. So we've done a lot of work on the packaging and branding around Eclipse RCP and also around performance. We've done a lot of work on performance to make sure that the startup time and the memory requirements for RCP applications are as minimal as possible and as fast a possible.
The alternative to a SAS application looking like a SAS application is a SAS application looking like other Java applications. In other words, now that the RCP is out, Eclipse is closer to delivering not only on one of its long term promises, but it's also digging itself deeper under the fingernails and Sun and the IDE it favors — NetBeans. The promise of Java has always been the idea of write once, run anywhere (WORA). After developers crunch their Java applications into a series of bytecodes, those applications should run identically on any computer that has a Java Virtual Machine (the JVM) regardless of the underlying platform.
Read complete article. . .
Oracle to set SOA techs free at JavaOne
From ZDNet. . .
For several years now, Oracle, with its own Java-based J2EE application server and integrated development environment (JDeveloper), has been trying to play in the same league as Java application server heavyweights IBM and BEA. But despite having traditionally positioned itself as the low cost provider of world class tools, the software vendor known mostly for it's database solutions hasn’t gotten the respect or traction that IBM, BEA, and now, the open source entry JBoss have (Oracle disputes this, citing Gartner's positioning of the company in the "leader quadrant" of one of the researcher's Magic Quadrants). Based on what Oracle's vice president Rick Shultz told me, Oracle will be looking to turn up the heat at JavaOne 2005 by lowering the cost of ownership even further while also hoping to advance its standards agenda by open sourcing certain technologies – a technique perfected by IBM that can sometimes lead to establishing de facto standards.
Although it's hard to say which of the JavaOne announcements is the most signficant one, the fact that Oracle is now giving away JDeveloper for free is both noteworthy and a sign of the times. Almost invariably, with any software company, the question is no longer "how much?" Rather, the new question is what do you give away for free or what part of what you make is open sourced?
Increasingly, the answer from application server vendors is "the developer tools." Oracle has long touted the combination of its server and developer tools as a full bodied Java development platform that, for its technical prowess, simply could not be matched in terms of value. In a story that's now more than two years old, Oracle responded to assertions by Cape Clear that application servers can be overkill by highlighting the value that one got at the time for $5,000. Said then Oracle 9iAS product marketing vice president John Magee, "Instead of spending $10,000 per CPU for Cape Clear, you can spend $5,000 per CPU with us and get Oracle 9iAS, which includes full J2EE 1.3 support, support for clustering, the TopLink object relational persistence framework, and five licenses for our Oracle 9i Jdeveloper integrated development environment."
Read complete article. . .
Friday, June 24, 2005
Oracle to offer JDeveloper tool for free
From LinuxWorld
Oracle at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco next week will announce intentions to offer its JDeveloper 10g Java developer tool for free.
The tool, which has been priced at US$995 per developer seat, will be available on June 28. Future releases will also be free.
Describing the tool as an SOA development environment, Oracle's Rick Schultz, vice president of Oracle Fusion middleware, said JDeveloper features an IDE, UML-based modeling, a BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) process flow designer, and Web-services capabilities.
"This is quite a mature product that we've had for a number of years," Schultz said. "What we're announcing is we're dropping the price tag on that product and making it available to the Java community for free."
Rather than being a response to the momentum of the open source Eclipse Java IDE, Oracle's move with JDeveloper is intended to increase JDeveloper adoption and drive interest in the company's Fusion middleware line, Schultz said. Fusion features application server, portal, identity management and integration software.
Several companies of late, including BEA Systems, Macromedia, and Borland, have endorsed the Eclipse IDE. But Schultz said offering JDeveloper for free is not being done to counter Eclipse.
"We're actually doing some work in the Eclipse Foundation as well, but as far as JDeveloper, we really don't even view it as a direct competitor in a way to Eclipse in a sense that JDeveloper is much more than an IDE," he said.
Oracle's JDeveloper announcement was viewed by one analyst as a way to compete with the SAP NetWeaver middleware platform rather than as an Eclipse countermeasure. "I think it has more to do with trying to get Fusion out there," said Shawn Willett, principal analyst at Current Analysis. "They're in a big-stakes battle with SAP."
"[JDeveloper is] a pretty first-rate Java IDE. I think they just see this as a big advantage and getting it out there for free is going to help sell their middleware and help them in the battle against NetWeaver," Willett said.
Read complete article. . .
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Open source makes BI move
From searchCIO.com
With an announcement this week supporting the Eclipse Foundation's push into the business intelligence (BI) market, Actuate has opened the door to open source BI.
Eclipse -- an open source development organization with support from major IT vendors such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co. and SAP AG -- has released version 1.0 of its Business Intelligence and Reporting Tool (BIRT). South San Francisco-based Actuate Corp. in turn has released a package of services, support, indemnification and maintenance to support BIRT.
"[Actuate] probably feels the BI market as it stands is relatively saturated," said Bernard Golden, CEO of open source consulting firm Navica Inc., based in San Carlos, Calif. "They can expand the market a lot coming in with a product that doesn't have the price points of traditional, proprietary BI."
The BIRT project leverages the 1.5 million Java developers already using the Eclipse platform. Similar to its Actuate partnership, BIRT intends to partner with other commercial projects, said Ian Skerrett, director of marketing.
"I think open source is going to impact BI market and this is the first wave of that," said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of Eclipse.
he BIRT tool was made available last week and already has had a preview edition downloaded more than 9,000 times. The tool offers a desktop environment for designing reports, an engine to generate reports within Java applications and application program interfaces to extend and integrate the tool. Users can create BIRT reports in HTML or .pdf formats in a matter of hours, as opposed to intensive hand coding, according to Eclipse.
By joining with Eclipse, Actuate offers commercial backing for users cautious about deploying open source, providing some stability and, because of its help developing the product, legal protection against vendors claiming ownership of the code.
Read complete article. . .
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
The pressures on Business Objects and Cognos
From The Register
Analysis Business Objects and Cognos are the most well-known suppliers in the business intelligence space and are perceived to be the market leaders. However, this duopoly is increasingly under threat and it is worth considering the different pressures that these suppliers are under.
The first element of competition is, of course, from other direct competitors, of which one would historically have thought of MicroStrategy and Brio (now part of Hyperion) but also Panorama, ProClarity and a number of others. However, arguably the biggest threat in the traditional OLAP space is coming from SAS, which is a bigger company than either Business Objects or Cognos, and which is making a determined (and apparently successful) attempt to challenge Business Objects and Cognos in their heartlands.
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hen there is reporting. Let's think out of the box for the moment and about application development. There are, today, basically only two development environments: Microsoft Visual Studio and the open source Eclipse framework. If you want to develop reporting as a part of an application within a Microsoft environment then your default choice is to use SQL Server Reporting Services.
Read complete article. . .
Middleware Inc.
From InformationWeek
It would be easy to think of IBM as the picture of goodwill when it comes to open-source software. Earlier this year, the company offered 30 of its products under open-source licenses, and IBM's Eclipse development toolset has been downloaded more than 40 million times since it was released as open source last year. Already, IBM has donated hundreds of products or components to the open-source community, spending more than $200 million annually on such efforts, while giving the phenomenon added legitimacy and much-needed business-class tools that layer on Linux. Big Blue? How about Big Benefactor.
But there's a limit to IBM's altruism. It's called top-line growth, and it's seriously lacking in the vendor's software business. With $15.1 billion in sales last year, IBM Software is among the largest software suppliers in the world but grew a measly 1% compared with a year earlier. That makes several years in a row now that IBM's software revenue has been essentially flat when gains from foreign currencies are excluded.
What's a big software vendor with a large and growing stake in open-source software to do? Crank up its revenue-producing middleware business, a line that includes application servers, transaction-processing layers, data-integration software, and E-commerce tools. In IBM's strategy, open-source software and its WebSphere middleware are connected--literally. All those Eclipse-created applications running on Linux and Apache servers need some help talking to each other and to the many other systems that make up a typical business IT infrastructure. IBM Software has grown through acquisition--Lotus, Informix, and Rational Software--building up a key middleware category that has become its bright spot. That business has grown from about 38% of software revenue five years ago to nearly 50% last year; revenue climbed 8% in the first quarter. Meanwhile, licenses for IBM's own operating systems have shrunk to 16% of revenue.
IBM Software group executive Steve Mills believes there's more money to be made in middleware. He's investing a heavily disproportionate 80% of IBM Software's development budget to expand the key middleware line into new areas of mobile computing, portals, personalization, information integration, content management, and more. "This is our business; we treat it as life and death," the no-nonsense Mills says.
IBM's strategy has some risks. Its pay-to-use middleware is anything but cheap, with some WebSphere products selling for more than $100,000; many customers aren't ready for big upgrades that use middleware to underpin services-oriented architectures; and the specter of vendor lock-in hasn't disappeared.
Read complete article. . .
Monday, June 20, 2005
The pressures on Business Objects and Cognos
From IT-Analysis.com
Business Objects and Cognos are the most well-known suppliers in the business intelligence space and are perceived to be the market leaders. However, this duopoly is increasingly under threat and it is worth considering the different pressures that these suppliers are under.
The first element of competition is, of course, from other direct competitors, of whom one would historically have thought of MicroStrategy and Brio (now part of Hyperion) but also Panorama, ProClarity and a number of others. However, arguably the biggest threat in the traditional OLAP space is coming from SAS, which is a bigger company than either Business Objects or Cognos, and which is making a determined (and apparently successful) attempt to challenge Business Objects and Cognos in their heartlands.
Then there is also IBM, which is pushing its BI credentials with products like AlphaBlox, which competes (though it is a toolkit) with the analytic applications provided by Business Object and Cognos.
Then there is reporting. Let's think out of the box for the moment and about application development. There are, today, basically only two development environments: Microsoft Visual Studio and the open source Eclipse framework. If you want to develop reporting as a part of an application within a Microsoft environment then your default choice is to use SQL Server Reporting Services. That was okay for Business Objects and Cognos because they could still expect to win some business in the Windows space and they had UNIX all to themselves. Not any more they don't. Actuate has just announced formal availability of BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools) which is the Eclipse standard for developing reporting applications (or parts thereof) within an Eclipse environment. How many developers are going to licence Crystal (part of Business Objects) or Cognos ReportNet when they get a free download of BIRT? And if they need some support because they want to embed the software then they can get that relatively inexpensively from Actuate?
Read complete article. . .
Thursday, June 16, 2005
What's New in Eclipse 3.1
From JDJ
Since Eclipse's first release in 2001, it has become a popular environment for Java development. In the period between March 10 and May 11, 2005, users downloaded over 17,000 copies of one of the production SDK releases and over 3,500 copies of one of the stable (milestone) SDK builds on average every day. A vibrant eco-system of developers, plug-in providers, authors, and bloggers has grown up around it. Eclipse has also gained the backing of the key Java vendors including BEA, Borland, IBM, SAP, and Sybase. Developers like Eclipse because it provides a great platform for building Java applications, and companies like it because it unifies their software tools under one open source umbrella.
Read complete. . .
Eclipse Foundation and Wind River Announce Approval of Eclipse Device Software Development Platform Project
From Yahoo! Finance
The Eclipse Foundation, an open source community committed to the development of a universal development platform, and Wind River Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: WIND - News), the global leader in Device Software Optimization (DSO), today announced that the Device Software Development Platform (DSDP) project, the top-level Eclipse project proposed by Wind River in March of this year, has been approved by the Eclipse Board of Directors. The DSDP is the first project within Eclipse specifically created to address device software development and is designed to drive a common development platform and value into the DSO developer community.
"The Eclipse Board's decision to approve the Device Software Development Platform project is great news for the Eclipse community," said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, Inc. "The device realm is teeming with software-driven innovation, and we are looking forward to watching this project develop, mature and create even more opportunities for standardization and innovation across the device landscape."
Read complete article. . .
Eclipse takes BI down open road
From VNUNet.com
Global open-source body the Eclipse Foundation has launched its first business intelligence (BI) tool, providing Java developers with reporting functionality for embedding in enterprise applications and automating previously hand-coded reporting tasks.
Experts said that Eclipse's Business Intelligence Reporting Tools (Birt) project version 1.0 falls short of being a full-blown BI platform, but is a first step towards Eclipse offering analytical BI.
Developed in co-operation with BI specialist Actuate, Birt features a desktop authoring environment for designing reports; an engine to generate reports within Java applications; and APIs to enable the product to be integrated or extended. The program has been downloaded 9,000 times since a preview version was launched in February, according to Eclipse.
Actuate vice-president of product marketing Mike Thoma said Birt can produce reports in either HTML or PDF format within hours. "Instead of writing code for reporting tasks, developers have a tool to automatically extract data and format reports," he added. "It also creates lower cost of ownership for firms, and as it is an Eclipse standard a large pool of people will understand the technology."
Actuate has launched a Birt services package, including maintenance and legal indemnity, with an annual subscription priced from $95 (£52) per user.
Thoma said that because Actuate had written a large portion of Birt's code it could offer legal protection against patent suits.
Read complete article. . .
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Friday, June 10, 2005
Eclipse Brings Open Source to Business Intelligence Market
From InternetAdSales.com
Eclipse BIRT 1.0 Leverages Leadership with Java Developers to Integrate Application Development and Business Intelligence
The Eclipse Foundation, an open source community committed to the implementation of a universal development platform, today announced that the Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) project version 1.0 is now generally available. BIRT 1.0 marks the culmination of Eclipse community participation during which hundreds of members of the community provided their feedback to shape the future of the project. BIRT has been downloaded 9,000 times since a preview version was made available in late February.
The goal of BIRT is to allow Java developers to easily integrate business intelligence and reporting capability into enterprise Java applications and commercial products. BIRT was created as a top level Eclipse project in September 2004. The project is part of the Eclipse strategy to provide open source tools and frameworks that span the software development lifecycle.
Read complete article. . .
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Eclipse releases open source business intelligence
From ComputerWeekly.com
The open source Eclipse Foundation has released Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (Birt) 1.0, a specification that developers can use to more easily build reporting capabilities into enterprise Java applications.
Eclipse announced Birt last autumn and a preview version was available for download from February Birt saves time for developers, who currently have to hand-code reporting and analysis capabilities into applications.
Birt 1.0 includes Eclipse Report Designer, an Eclipse-based desktop authoring environment; and Eclipse Report Engine, which generates reports using the report object model designs created by Eclipse Report Designer.
Read complete article. . .
Another passenger on the Eclipse bandwagon
From Sitepoint.com
Macromedia has joined the growing masses busily porting their top-end development tools to the Eclipse platform.
In a flurry of press releases and publicity on its website, Macromedia this week announced the Flash Platform, which really isn't anything new -- just a, er, flashy reminder of everything that Flash can do.
What is new, and of particular interest to Java developers, is the news that the next-generation development tool (codenamed "Zorn") to replace Macromedia's custom-built Flex Builder IDE will be based on the Eclipse platform.
Flex is a platform for rapidly developing Web applications that use rich, Flash-based interfaces generated on-the-fly on the server side, and that interact in real time with server-side applications, typically written in Java. Although this is an amazingly slick and powerful development environment, I think it's safe to say that uptake has been slow among Java developers, who are typically reluctant to leave their development tools of choice to try a custom IDE.
Read complete article. . .
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Eclipse Brings Open Source to Business Intelligence Market
BusinessIntelligence.com Reports: The Eclipse Foundation, an open source community committed to the implementation of a universal development platform, today announced that the Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) project version 1.0 is now generally available. BIRT 1.0 marks the culmination of Eclipse community participation during which hundreds of members of the community provided their feedback to shape the future of the project. BIRT has been downloaded 9,000 times since a preview version was made available in late February. The goal of BIRT is to allow Java developers to easily integrate business intelligence and reporting capability into enterprise Java applications and commercial products. BIRT was created as a top level Eclipse project in September 2004. The project is part of the Eclipse strategy to provide open source tools and frameworks that span the software development lifecycle. BIRT benefits Java developers by minimizing the time and effort associated with hand coding core application functions such as reporting and analysis. BIRT enables HTML and PDF reports to be created in a matter of hours, a great alternative to coding the same functionality from scratch, using JavaServer Pages (JSP) and Java. Using BIRT, developers are able to quickly respond to changes in user requirements, while delivering and maintaining functionally rich, perfectly formatted reports to their end users in either PDF or HTML format. Furthermore, BIRT 1.0 provides excellent support for internationalisation and localisation to save the developer time in customising reports for particular languages and locales. For instance, a single report can be created that displays strings in the end user's language. BIRT also provides locale-aware data formatting, meaning that a date, currency or numeric format can be applied to a report based on the end user’s locale with dynamic formatting compensating for the typical lengths of language descriptors by automatically adjusting the size of report items to fit their content. This avoids the need to test a report with every possible translation. The Report designer is available in Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Korean and Spanish interfaces. “BIRT 1.0 extends the Eclipse platform to provide infrastructure and tools that allow application developers to easily design, generate and integrate reports within their applications,” said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. “BIRT is a natural extension for Eclipse and it supports key themes within the overall Eclipse community which include designing extensible functionality for broad community appeal and providing a tool that is enterprise ready, while remaining simple to use.” BIRT 1.0 includes: -- Eclipse Report Designer: an Eclipse-based desktop authoring environment that generates reports based on a comprehensive XML-based report design. In addition, it provides a rich business chart generation capability. -- Eclipse Report Engine: enables reports to be generated within any Java application using report designs created by the Designer
Macromedia aligns with Eclipse
Builder.AU Reports: Macromedia is to join the Eclipse Foundation and plans to create
Zorn, an IDE based on Eclipse.
In a bid to get Java developers writing Flash applications,
Macromedia is throwing its weight behind the Eclipse programming system.
Eclipse is an open-source integrated development environment that provides application developers with programming tools and reusable components. While based on Sun Microsystems' Java programming language, Eclipse can be used to create applications in formats competitive with Java, including Flash.
Macromedia said it will join the Eclipse Foundation and create a
"next-generation rich Internet application development tool," code-named Zorn, based on Eclipse. Macromedia are stating that when Zorn is released it will replace Flex Builder, Macromedia's current tool for building rich internet applications. According to Macromedia Zorn will be the "primary tool for developing applications that leverage the Macromedia Flex framework. Zorn may implement some features differently, but the intent is that Zorn will provide even greater utility for Flex developers."
"This is a big move for us because we've always used our own tools," said Kevin Lynch, Macromedia's chief software architect. "Now we're adopting an open-source approach to build a new tool. It's important for the Flash platform because there's a growing community of developers adopting Eclipse and we would like to enable developers for the Flash platform to take advantage of it."
For the past few years, Macromedia has been trying to transform Flash from a Web design and animation tool into a technology for creating Internet-based applications. Against heated competition by everything from existing Web technologies to Microsoft's long-delayed new
operating system, code-named Longhorn, Macromedia has claimed some success with the adoption by more than 300 enterprises of its Flex application server software, which is used to create Flash applications.
Read complete article. . .
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Eclipse issues BIRT 1.0 BI software
The open source community gained another BI option in the form of BIRT 1.0 on Monday, when the Eclipse organization announced general availability of the reporting tool.
Actuate also announced support and maintenance services for BIRT.
BIRT, which stands for Business Intelligence and Reporting Tool, includes the Eclipse Report Designer for authoring reports and features charting functionality, as well as the Eclipse Report Engine for generating those reports within Java applications.
"We are riding the Eclipse wave," said Mike Thoma, vice president of marketing for Actuate, and an Eclipse member.
Thoma described BIRT as the only top-level, 100 percent pure Java reporting tool available.
Eclipse is targeting the Java developers already using the Eclipse IDE and, among those, users in need of BI apps that require some application development process, Thoma said. For instance, a company that wants to enable its employees to visualize data, such as 401K reports, might consider BIRT rather than a proprietary product, he said.
BIRT supports multiple data sources and compound reports. The tool also generates XML or HTML output.
The benefits to using open source for reporting mirror the general advantages of other open source applications and operating systems: lower initial pricing, a promise of lower total cost of ownership, greater control, and customization.
"Instead of being locked into proprietary formats and vendors, you could choose one tool for embedded reports within Java applications, another for end-user reporting, another for high-volume production reporting -- whatever is most appropriate for the job -- but all of them will be compatible and able to share components as desired, such as templates or complex database queries defined by a DBA who doesn't need to know the reporting tool," wrote Carl Zetie, a vice president at Forrester Research in response to e-mail questions.
Likewise, at run time users can choose between different run-time engines, including open source or commercial ones, Zetie added.
Also on Monday, Actuate detailed its commercial version of BIRT, which includes everything the open source version has, but "removes the barriers to adoption," Thoma said.
For US$3,495 per year, subscribers get indemnification, support, and maintenance of BIRT 1.0.
Monday, June 06, 2005
Macromedia aligns with Eclipse
In a bid to get Java developers writing Flash applications, Macromedia is throwing its weight behind the Eclipse programming system.
Eclipse is an open-source "integrated development environment," or IDE, which provides application developers with programming tools and reusable components. While based on Sun Microsystems' Java programming language, Eclipse can be used to create applications in formats competitive with Java, including Flash.
Macromedia said it will join the Eclipse Foundation and create a "next-generation rich Internet application development tool," code-named Zorn, based on Eclipse.
"This is a big move for us because we've always used our own tools," said Kevin Lynch, Macromedia's chief software architect. "Now we're adopting an open-source approach to build a new tool. It's important for the Flash platform because there's a growing community of developers adopting Eclipse and we would like to enable developers for the Flash platform to take advantage of it."
For the past few years, Macromedia has been trying to transform Flash from a Web design and animation tool into a technology for creating Internet-based applications. Against heated competition by everything from existing Web technologies to Microsoft's long-delayed new operating system, code-named Longhorn, Macromedia has claimed some success with the adoption by more than 300 enterprises of its Flex application server software, which is used to create Flash applications.
Now Macromedia, which Adobe Systems in April announced its intention to acquire, is taking the Web application fight to developers, many of whom have long regarded Flash as a design language.
"Historically, one of the challenges Macromedia has faced is that the Flash development metaphor has been foreign to people familiar with (Microsoft's) Visual Basic and Visual Studio," said Burton Group analyst Peter O'Kelly. "These people think in terms of projects and forms and code modules, as opposed to timelines, movies and scripts that Flash's creative designers know."
Eclipse Foundation Launches New Web Infrastructure to Support the Expanding Eclipse Community
InternetAdSales.com Reports:
The Eclipse Foundation today announced a major infrastructure upgrade of the Eclipse community web site (http://www.eclipse.org). This upgrade was made possible through contributions of hardware and software from HP, IBM, Intel and Novell. Due to increased Web traffic and download rates among the burgeoning Eclipse open source community, Eclipse.org’s web infrastructure has been redesigned to scale for growth and ensure high availability for the entire community.
With approximately 1.2 million page views on an average day and 10 terabytes of data transferred per month, the previous infrastructure for the site was under a constant strain. As more companies join the Eclipse Foundation and Eclipse technologies gain adoption across the industry, it was clear that a major change to the infrastructure was necessary. A new product release of Eclipse-based open source projects, such as the upcoming Eclipse 3.1 Platform launch, could cause massive surges in traffic and bring downloads to a standstill. With the new architecture, throughput is greatly increased as are the expanded capabilities needed for periods of high traffic.
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Borland announces Eclipse product roadmap - Computer Business Review
Borland announces Eclipse product roadmap - Computer Business Review
Fresh from its announcements last February that it was joining Eclipse and taking lead of a project to develop visual modeling, Borland has announced how the new strategy will impact product plans.
Borland is planning the release of two updates to JBuilder. The first, JBuilder 2006, will ship sometime during the second half of 2005 and be based on the original Borland visual framework. The Eclipse-ready release, code-named Peloton, will follow in early 2006.
ference being in the Eclipse shell and APIs, which the new version will use. Existing customers will be entitled to both releases if they are on a standard annual maintenance contract, and will be provided migration tools if they wish to go to Peloton.
At this point, Borland has no plans to sunset the existing product, although it naturally hopes that users will over the long term migrate to the Eclipse version. Borland bit the bullet last winter, joining Eclipse, because it said that's what its customers were demanding.
"This is what our customers have asked us for. The ones that have evaluated Eclipse saw great value in the integration framework," said Rob Chang, director of product marketing for developer products. Chang claims that Peloton will be designed to make it easy to use third-party plug-in tools that are Eclipse compliant.
Both JBuilder 2006 and Peloton will add new collaboration functionality. For instance, while the current version of JBuilder supports distributed refactoring, where developers can make changes to other projects in a repository, the new products will add peer-to-peer collaboration, which will allow multiple developers to view and manipulate the same code or objects simultaneously.
"This enables the notion of agile development and extreme programming, accommodating the push for distributed or outsourced development," said Chang.
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Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Eclipse: Adapting and Updating an IDE
Mary Kroening write in Dr. Dobb's Journal:
In the article "Eclipse: A Software Developer's Story" (C/C++ Users Journal, September 2003; http://www.ddj.com/documents/s=9710/cuj0309kroening/), I described how and why we updated our Amzi! Prolog proprietary IDE to one based on Eclipse 2. A lot has happened since then, the least of which is that Eclipse is now at Version 3.1. In this article, I describe the move to Eclipse 3, and share user feedback about the new IDE. To recap:
Prolog differs from conventional programming languages in that it is non-procedural and logic-based. It has built-in search and pattern-matching capabilities--so programs run forwards looking for a match, then backwards on failure or to find additional matches. Unlike other Prolog implementations, Amzi! (http://www.amzi.com/) specializes in embedding Prolog logic-bases in conventional (procedural) languages and tools such as Java, C++, .NET, Delphi, and Web servers.
The existing Amzi! IDE dates from the early 1990s and was showing its age. Consequently, a couple of years ago we started thinking seriously about a replacement. We wanted an IDE that would run on multiple platforms, and we wanted to support all the modern conveniences.
The question was how to do that without a budget of the likes of Microsoft or Borland? When we learned of Eclipse, we were immediately intrigued as it offered:
- True open source licensing where we could develop and own our Prolog-specific additions yet contribute to the base product for all to benefit.
- Ready-to-run downloads for a wide variety of Windows and UNIX platforms.
- Full source code and remote debugging support. The latter is especially important to us because our customers develop Prolog components as part of larger applications instead of stand-alone Prolog programs. Debugging embedded components (especially those running on Web servers) is especially challenging without remote debugging.
- Our users could develop both parts of their application using the same IDE. That is, they could develop the user interface in Java or C++ and an intelligent logic-base and/or rule-base in Prolog without ever leaving Eclipse.
- The ability to provide international versions and support other languages (half our customers are outside the United States).
- An array of modern conveniences such as projects, syntax coloring, file outlining, Ant build tools, slick source code repository interfaces and automatic file versioning.
- The Eclipse Consortium is supported by all the major computer software developers (except Microsoft).
- An active developer community providing a variety of extensions for other languages (Java, C++, Cobol) and features (debugging servlets, modeling, even telnet).
However, there were also some downsides:
- Eclipse is written in Java. So the minimum download for the Eclipse Platform (runtime) and Java is over 30 MB. Our current product download is just over 5 MB, so that is a very large increase for our international customers.
- The dynamic nature of Eclipse and its extensions presents some performance issues.
- Project handling is confusing and inflexible, but improving.
On balance, an Eclipse-based IDE would clearly offer many more features than we could ever hope to build from scratch. But could we get Eclipse to adapt to a Prolog developer's needs for building components in a non-procedural programming language, and at what cost initially and for each major upgrade of Eclipse?
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Borland Announces JBuilder Product Roadmap, New Eclipse-Based Collaborative Developer Environment
BusinessWire Reports:
Borland Software Corporation (Nasdaq:BORL), a global leader for Software Delivery Optimization(TM), today announced details around the future of JBuilder(R), Borland's award-winning Java(TM) integrated development environment. The roadmap includes an increasing investment in Eclipse as JBuilder's underlying integration framework, the introduction of new innovative developer collaboration and productivity capabilities, and a clear path for developers to take advantage of Borland's Software Delivery Optimization vision.
"We are in a new era of development. An era in which developers must focus on enhancing both their individual art and their contribution within a larger team -- a team that often spans organizational roles, geographies and time zones," said Boz Elloy, senior vice president of products at Borland. "Now more than ever, the successful delivery of software depends on teamwork, communication, agility and efficiency. The next generation of Borland's developer-centric solutions will be designed to help individuals and teams manage the pressures of this new era and thrive in it."
Over the next year, Borland is planning to introduce two new JBuilder products that address the evolving needs of enterprise Java developers. The first, JBuilder 2006, is expected to ship later this year. It will be followed in the first half of next year by a new commercial JBuilder product, code-named "Peloton," that will utilize Eclipse as its underlying integration framework. Customers on JBuilder support and maintenance will be entitled to free upgrades to both products.
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