Eclipse touts Web, J2EE development in tools release

Source: LinuxWorld

Summary:
Bolstering development of Web and enterprise J2EE applications in the open source arena, the Eclipse Foundation is set to release Version 1.0 of its Eclipse Web Tools Platform.

Version 1.0 features the official APIs for the platform, which had been available in previous incarnations with provisional APIs. "We're declaring ourselves ready as a platform for commercial adoption," said Tim Wagner, a project lead for the Web Tools Platform and senior manager on the BEA Systems Workshop team.

Web Tools Platform 1.0 will serve as precursor to a planned release of several Eclipse technologies simultaneously next June, via a bundle now dubbed "Callisto."

A top-level project at Eclipse, Eclipse Web Tools Platform features editors for Java and associated technologies. J2EE 1.4 is supported on the platform, which plugs in to the Eclipse open source IDE.

Editors are included for JavaServer Pages, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, and XSD (XML Schema Definition). Wizards are included for generating Enterprise JavaBeans, session beans, and message beans. Code is generated automatically.

Vendors can use Web Tools Platform 1.0 as a base offering on which to add value for commercial purposes. BEA plans to implement the Web Tools Platform in its BEA Workshop development platform and equip it with functionality such as facilities for using for the Apache Beehive programming model and extended support for the BEA WebLogic Server application server.

The Web Services Explorer tool featured in Web Tools Platform 1.0 is a browser-based application allowing for discovery and invocation of Web services from within the platform. "It allows you to, for example, go out to discover a WSDL or Web service that's available on the Web and begin interacting with it directly," Wagner said. An example could be an Amazon Web service geared toward the Amazon product catalog; users would not have to write any code to get to the Web service.

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