Sybase launches larger-scale version of RFID stack

Source: Computer Business Review

Summary:
Sybase Inc today will launch a new version of its RFID Enterprise software stack that is geared toward large-scale RFID deployments.

RFID Enterprise 2.0 includes an Eclipse tooling environment, which enables companies to create composite applications, as well as on-disc encryption to improve security.

Essentially, the latest version has been geared for companies that are moving beyond pilot-stage RFID projects to more in-field operations, said Dan Auker, Sybase's product line manager of its Information Technology Solutions group.

RFID Enterprise 2.0 features three key components, including network and device management. The new device management capabilities have been extended to also include periphery devices, such as secondary light sensors that confirm when an RFID tag has actually been read. Other new features include being able to provision devices on a group level as opposed to individually.

Sybase upgrades RFID software

Source: InfoWorld Nederland

Summary:

Sybase Inc. on Monday introduced software aimed at helping enterprises analyze and integrate data collected using RFID (radio frequency identification).

Sybase's RFID Enterprise 2.0 offers device and network management capabilities and can also help users integrate RFID data into an existing data architecture. The software supports an Eclipse-based integrated development environment and a core runtime engine for event routing, business activity monitoring and message transformation.

Some companies are beginning to use the tiny RFID chips, embedding them into product packaging, because the chips can store more data than barcodes and because they can be read from several feet away.

Sybase said that it offers the components needed to get the most out of an RFID deployment, including tools for deploying and managing the network, middleware to integrate the RFID data with existing systems, and a database for collecting and analyzing the data.

Some companies in the U.S. are employing RFID because their customers are demanding it. For example, the retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is requiring its largest suppliers to deploy RFID programs if they want to continue doing business with Wal-Mart. While some organizations may be employing RFID because of such mandates, Sybase notes that those companies can leverage the investment by investing in the tools that allow them to analyze and use the data they are already collecting.

Developing Web Services "Eclipse Web Tools Project"

Source: SYS-CON ITALIA

Summary:

Today's trend is to integrate existing systems in a standard way to make disparate implementations interoperate. Web Services and XML came along with the ability to provide a standard communication interface between these systems, as well as the standard description language - WSDL - the Web Services Description Language that lets those systems define the structure of the services they're providing. Web Services are built using three classic components:

• SOAP - Simple Object Access Protocol - the XML-based communication protocol for sending data using Web Services.
• WSDL - Web Services Description Language - the XML-based language that describes the Web Service that's provided by a particular system and how to access it.
• UDDI - Universal Description Discovery Integration - a directory that helps to identify dynamically where particular Web Services are and how to find them, as well as a means of publishing services for those who want to provide them.

GUI Builder for Eclipse 3.1 and UltraLightClient Released

Source: PRWeb

Summary:
ULC Visual Editor 5.0 for Eclipse 3.1 is now available for download from the Canoo website (http://www.canoo.com/ulc/downloads/visualeditor50.html). This new release is the first version that runs with Eclipse 3.1 and the Eclipse Visual Editor 1.1. Porting to Eclipse 3.1 has greatly improved the overall performance and stability of the tool. Use this editor to visually compose Rich Internet Applications (RIA).

Justsystems Announces xfy Collaboration with IBM Workplace for XML Data Processing

Source: JapanCorp.net

Summary:
Justsystems, Inc. , a leading document processing software provider, announced today that it will work with IBM Workplace software to run joint research for XML data processing on rich client system.

IBM Workplace Client Technology is an integrated client platform which supports strong collaboration features. It provides a runtime environment and brings high productivity to employees by running office applications such as e-mail, instant messaging, document processing, presentation charts and spreadsheets. Furthermore, many business applications will be prepared by development partners. Workplace Client Technology is based on the Eclipse framework, and many application developers can utilize the Eclipse open source framework for system integration.

IBM's Sabbah touts Rational offerings

Source: InfoWorld

Summary:
Daniel Sabbah is general manger of IBM Rational Software, within the IBM Software Group. Prior to that, he was vice president of software development, strategy, and architecture for the group. Having begun his IBM career in 1974, Sabbah is experienced in both product development and software research, according to the company. InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill met with Sabbah in San Francisco last week to discuss IBM's application lifecycle management efforts and talk about other subjects such as open source.

InfoWorld: Is Borland's selling off its Java and Windows tools simply an indication that it couldn't compete with Microsoft and open source?

Sabbah: Yes. I think that that's an accurate statement. Borland is getting into this space around lifecycle management, or trying to. And they've decided that the value that comes out of individual tools for isolated capabilities, like J2EE or something like that, is not something that they feel they can compete with in light of a lot of the open source efforts around Eclipse.

Eclipse gets new member

Source: InfoWorld TechWatch | InfoWorld | By Paul Krill

Summary:
Munich, Germany-based MicroDoc has joined the Eclipse Foundation as an Add-in Provider member, according to a posting on the open source tools organization's Web site on Wednesday.

Specializing in object-oriented development technologies, MicroDoc will participate in the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) effort, lending expertise in custom graphics plug-in development, J2EE/mainframe integration and embedded RCP design and development.

"We are delighted to be joining the Eclipse Foundation and to be able to be able to support this strategic organization driving a unifying architectural approach for RCP deployment across both embedded and enterprise sectors," said Hendrik Hoefer, managing director at MicroDoc, in a prepared statement.

Zend & IBM Working On Eclipse PHP IDE

Source: SDA India Magazine

Summary:
Zend is working, together with IBM, on an Eclipse-based open source PHP development solution. According to the proposal, the PHP IDE project will deliver a PHP Integrated Development Environment framework for the Eclipse platform. This project will encompass the development components necessary to develop PHP-based Web Applications and will facilitate extensibility. It will leverage the existing Web Tools Project in providing developers with PHP capabilities.

Zend and IBM will be making an initial code contribution that will encompass the core functionality for the PHP project including:

• High-quality and proven PHP model infrastructure incl. editor, syntax highlighting, code completion, and PHP explorer
• PHP perspectives
• PHP debugging capabilities

The PHP IDE project will be built using several Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP) project components. The WTP provide generic, extensible and standards-based tools for Web-centric application development. It provides editors for various Web centric languages such as: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, WSDL, etc. In addition, WTP provides facilities for configuring and connecting to Web Servers.

AccuRev Endorses Eclipse ALF Project

Source: EFYTimes.com

Summary:
AccuRev is developing a set of well-defined software configuration management (SCM)-related use cases to expand the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) requirements beyond basic SCM functionality.

Saturday, February 18, 2006: New Delhi: AccuRev has announced its support to Eclipse ALF Project. AccuRev will provide the necessary web services to offer full SCM functionality within Eclipse to align with today's SCM solutions, and is also developing a set of well-defined software configuration management (SCM)-related use cases to expand the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) requirements beyond basic SCM functionality.

Getting Eclipse to output reports in PDF

Source: Network World

Summary:
It's possible that you installed BIRT 2.0, which was released in January. The print icon in BIRT was disabled just before the new release because of report-parameter handling problems that couldn't be addressed in time for the release.

Even though the print icon is gone, you can still generate PDF copies of the reports for printing by building your own report URL, similar to:

http://myserver:8080/birt-viewer/run?__report= somereport.rptdesign&__format= pdf

The best resource for good information on working with BIRT is the BIRT newsgroup. There have been several discussions lately about generating PDF reports using BIRT 2.0.

Oracle looks to take on Eclipse

Source: Techworld.com

Summary:

Oracle has just released a free JDeveloper Java development tool, in an attempt to compete with the open source community Eclipse.

The company also is shipping Application Server 10g Release 3, an upgrade to its application server, bundled with a rules engine and an ESB (enterprise service bus).

With the new version of JDeveloper, the company is vying with the Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEs for the hearts of developers, said Ted Farrell, Oracle chief architect and vice president.

JDeveloper boasts enhanced features such as a visual page flow support and a BPEL designer, Farrell said. Oracle, which is a member of the Eclipse Foundation, hopes to leverage the free developer tool to promote its commercial offerings.

JDeveloper has an advantage over the Eclipse IDE in building of web applications, said one Eclipse user.

"Eclipse is very good [for coding] our base application, but when you want to do Web applications, you use some kind of plug-in," said Eric Marcoux, a technical architect at Fujitsu Consulting. The plug-ins do not offer ideal integration, according to Marcoux.

Oracle cites Eclipse as competitor with new dev tool

Source: TMC.net

Summary:
Oracle, with the newly shipping version of its free JDeveloper Java development tool, is looking to compete with the Eclipse open source juggernaut. The company also is shipping an upgrade to its application server, bundled with a rules engine and an ESB (enterprise service bus).

Available are the standard version of Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 and Oracle JDeveloper 10g Release 3. They are being positioned as components of the Oracle Fusion middleware platform, which is billed as the company's SOA platform.

With the new version of JDeveloper, the company is vying with the Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEs for the hearts of developers, said Ted Farrell, Oracle chief architect and vice president.

The Value of Eclipse for the Open Source Community

Source: B-EYE-Network

Summary:
Twenty years ago, virtually all companies selling networking products sold products based on proprietary protocols. These vendors were hoping to dominate the networking market by locking out other vendors who did not support their protocols.

Among these vendors were then-LAN software giant Novell and Microsoft. What none foresaw was the emergence of a vendor-neutral standards body, the Internet Engineering Task Force. The IETF was developing a set of protocols that would supplant the current protocols of these vendors, as well as their dreams of network domination.

Today, another open community is devoted to developing a vendor-neutral and open platform, this time for application development. Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are focused on providing a vendor-neutral open development platform and application frameworks for building software.

The potential for Eclipse-based projects is huge for numerous reasons, particularly for the business intelligence community. Eclipse itself also has huge potential. It is a significant project of projects, funded and supported by many of the biggest names in business intelligence and business software. The most obvious and prominent Eclipse project related to business intelligence is the Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) project.

Eclipse (SWT) in Mac OS X: Why Carbon Instead of Cocoa

Source: SDA India Magazine

Summary:
A few reasons exist as to why SWT on Mac is built on Carbon instead of Cocoa. Cocoa it seems looks like a SWT peer and it would be difficult to port SWT to it, because of event loop issues and other random problems that arise during porting.

Cocoa is easier to work with on Mac, but it does try to do things in different ways than Carbon. Even though Cocoa applications have good features, it would take quite an effort to convert them to carbon, as the widget hierarchy is completely different and wouldn't necessarily fit in with how SWT works. Secondly, most UI development under Cocoa is done under Interface Builder rather than programmatically. Carbon could have had a better .app launcher under Mac OS X, as it launches a separate VM, but this is more of an eclipse-imposed restriction.

The Carbon environment runs all Mac OS 8 and OS 9 applications whose code has been optimized for Mac OS X. The Carbon environment features a set of programming interfaces derived from earlier versions of the Mac OS. By converting their code to use the Carbon application programming interfaces (APIs), developers ensure that their products take advantage of protected memory and preemptive multitasking.

Eclipse: It's all about community

Source: InfoWorld TechWatch

Summary:

The Eclipse Foundation will defer to the developer community to determine what paths it should take with its open source tools, an Eclipse official said at the Evans Data Developer Relations Conference on Monday afternoon.

Eclipse is seeking community feedback on what to include in the 3.2 version of the Eclipse platform, due in June, said Donald Smith, director of ecosystems development at Eclipse.

"The community is deciding what's cool," Smith said.

Blogging has made it really easy to participate in Eclipse, which also looks to Bugzilla to help refine its offerings. Anyone can submit a bug, he said.

"We want anybody, even competitors, to come and look and see what's going on," Smith said.

To build community, Eclipse has made a decision not to trademark the Eclipse brand. This has resulted in the Eclipse name and logo showing up in unrelated ventures in areas such as real estate and a courier service, Smith said.

Wanna Have IBM Training? Visit LinuxAsia 2006

Source: EFYTimes.com

Summary:
They say 'if you want to learn what brotherhood and freedom are all about, join open source community and you will know true definition of community and freedom'. This year, LinuxAsia 2006 will witness a gathering of thousands of open source supporters from all over the globe. And, who said that about freedom and community? Be there, and you will find yourself repeating the same.

This year, one of the major features of LinuxAsia -- of course, among many other mega events -- is IBM LinuxFest. The IBM LinuxFest workshop has been designed to teach you in a very simple way how to install and configure: Linux (Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SuSE Linux) in your environment; IBM DB2 database server and WebSphere Application Server.

Besides, you will also have `Hands-on with Eclipse & Derby'. In this hands-on, you will learn about open source Eclipse platform for application development, open source database Apache Derby and application development with open source tools and open standards-based technologies.

Eclipse can be a platform for application development at zero cost with the help of open source tools and based on open standard technologies. This workshop will introduce you to Eclipse platform and application development with the help of tools like Apache Derby (open source database, small footprint, zero administration), JUnit (unit testing), CVS (version control), Ant (build) and Apache tomcat (Web server) based on Java standards.

Adobe Releases Flex 2.0 Beta Products to the Developer Community

Source: EMediaLive.com

Summary:
Adobe Systems Incorporated has announced the public beta of Adobe Flex 2.0 product line and Adobe Flash Player 8.5, the leading application development solution for delivering rich Internet applications. Developers everywhere now will be able to build next generation Web experiences that help organizations engage users more effectively, increase productivity, and deliver better business results.

The Flex 2.0 product line provides developers with a powerful and extensible application framework, intuitive programming model, standards-based data integration, and a powerful Eclipse-based integrated development environment (IDE) for application development and UI design. With an extensive component library, advanced data integration, and support for standard back-end server infrastructures, Flex 2.0 enables developers to build virtually any type of rich Internet application, from simple interactive sites, to rich data dashboards and portals, to data intensive enterprise applications.

Modeling Web Services Choreography with New Eclipse Tool

Source: SYS-CON ITALIA

Summary:
Choreography is the dark continent of Web services: few onlookers have traveled there, and many question whether there are any riches to be brought home from the trip. In the first place, choreographies bear such a striking resemblance to business processes that the novice might think that the two types of artifacts are indistinguishable.

After all, isn't choreography just a way to describe what a business process does (i.e., it choreographs the actions of its participants)? And then there is the dearth of choreography tools; until recently choreography was a topic learned by reading, not by hands-on experimentation. This article takes the trip. It describes how, in the ideal set of design tools, not only are choreographies and processes treated as entirely different artifacts (with different development life cycles), but that special modeling techniques are available to fully accentuate the nuances of choreographies.

Choreography and Process
Contrary to what many Web services and business process people think, it is terminologically incorrect to say that a process choreographs its services. Choreography describes the global protocol that governs how individual processes interact with one another. Each process offers its own services and uses services of partner processes. It is correct to say that a process orchestrates these services, but the view from one process is only the behavior of that process in terms of its partners. Choreography presents the unified global view, depicting all of the processes and their required interactions.

Web Services Choreography Description Language (WS-CDL) is the leading choreography language, and Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) is the dominant process orchestration language. Though both XML-based languages feature a similar flow-oriented design style, only BPEL is meant to have an actual run-time platform: BPEL processes run, and WS-CDL choreographies are formal specifications documenting rules to guide interprocess exchange. There are no traffic cops in this laissez faire world, only traffic laws and law-abiding drivers.

IBM Rounds Up Support For 'Standard' Ajax Environment

Source: InformationWeek

Summary:
Ajax is becoming popular for building interactive Web applications, so much so that a group of vendors is trying to ensure it gets implemented uniformly.

Ajax is shorthand for asynchronous JavaScript and XML, a combination of standard technologies that allows a Web application to interact with a user without constantly downloading HTML pages.

With Ajax, active parts of the page seek more data from an Internet server or validate data entered by a user, without requiring the user to stare at an hourglass symbol as the page goes back to a server. Google Maps is based on Ajax. The map fills out in the direction of the user's cursor movement because Ajax is detecting the movement and downloading more data from the map server, without the user specifically requesting it.

Google had to invest heavily to get Maps to perform consistently across different browser windows. That's why Google and others backed IBM last week when it announced it was donating software that will allow developers to work with Ajax on the Eclipse programmer's workbench. In effect, code developed with Rico, Dojo, or Zimbra, three popular Ajax toolkits, can be imported into Eclipse, run there for review and inspection purposes, debugged, and made ready as part of a larger Web application.

IBM's move is called Open Ajax and it's backed by BEA Systems, Borland Software, Google, Laszlo Systems, Openwave Systems, Oracle, Mozilla, Novell, Red Hat, Yahoo, Zend Technologies, and Zimbra. The "open" nomenclature, often used with open-source code standards, is not an exact fit, since Ajax is already based on existing standards for JavaScript (set by the European standards body, ECMA) and XML.

But as David Temkin, CTO of Laszlo Systems says, "While Ajax is based on standards, the toolkits themselves are implemented differently." What IBM has done is generate a framework or runtime environment for Eclipse that can take the output from recognized toolkits, run it inside Eclipse, and debug it there.

Look out Eclipse, NetBeans 5 is Here

Source: InternetNews.com

Summary:
In scientific terms an eclipse is defined as an event that blocks the sun. For a number of years, the Eclipse IDE(define)has in some respects "eclipsed" Sun Microsystems' IDE as well; that may no longer necessarily be the case.

The Sun backed NetBeans 5.0 is now publicly available boasting a long list of new features and improvements aimed at firmly placing it at the top of the IDE pile. The new IDE includes new GUI tools, mobility, web services refactoring as well as a new support offering from Sun.

Among the most notable improvements in NetBeans 5.0 is the NetBeans GUI Builder also known as known as Project Matisse. Matisse is a drag and drop IDE GUI that is supposed to simplify layout by automatically suggesting spacing, alignment and other layout concerns. Struts and Java Server Faces support is also improved as is support for CVS version control.

As an added bonus, Sun is offering free support to NetBeans 5.0 users via the Sun Developer Network program which is currently in Beta itself. The freely available open source IDE is also being bundled with the NetBeans Mobility Pack 5 which is targeted specifically at mobile Java ME developers.

Tech firms to promote Ajax in open source community

Source: Digital Media Asia

Summary:
Some computer industry vendors and internet-based businesses are making it easier for the open source community to form and popularise Ajax. Ajax is a fast-growing open client technology which businesses are incorporating into their external and internal websites to simplify the browsing experience, making it easier for users to shop, work, plan, correspond and navigate online.

Ajax makes it unnecessary to manually refresh one's browser to send or receive information over the web. Instead, information is automatically updated and available on demand, allowing the user to 'drag and drop' or input information and get a response without refreshing the browser, much like one would do on a PC desktop.

BEA Unveils Workshop Studio Providing Industry’s First Extensive Eclipse Tooling for EJB3 Persistence Engines

Source: noticias.info

Summary:
BEA Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: BEAS), a world leader in enterprise infrastructure software, today announced the latest release of its award-winning, Eclipse-based BEA Workshop Studio. With the final release of BEA Workshop Studio 3.0, BEA becomes the first in the industry to provide Eclipse Tools for the pre-final Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 (EJB3) persistence interface. EJB3 is an eagerly anticipated specification of the upcoming Java Platform Enterprise Edition 5 (Java EE 5) specification. EJB3 is designed to provide developers lightweight container requirements and to dramatically simplify development with new POJO-based persistence APIs for object/relational mappings.

With this latest release, BEA is positioned to meet the demand for early access to EJB3 tools that are powerful and easy to use. BEA is the only vendor providing multiple options for persistence engines that support the EJB3 persistence specification, designed to provide both an open source and commercial option via Hibernate and BEA Kodo, two popular O/R mapping solutions which can provide access to and communicate with relational databases. The open source Spring Integrated Development Environment Project (IDE) is slated to be bundled with BEA Workshop Studio, further bolstering BEA support for the Spring Framework within the WebLogic® platform.

IBM spearheads AJAX tools at Eclipse

Source: Tech News on ZDNet

Summary:
IBM and several other software companies have proposed an open-source project to simplify development tools for AJAX-style Web development.

Called Open Ajax, the proposed open-source project will be based on IBM-donated code designed to let software developers use the Eclipse development tool to write Web applications using AJAX.

AJAX, which stands for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML, is a way of writing applications so that Web pages can be interactive and users don't have to press the refresh button to update data on their screens.

As previously reported, the project has the backing of several software companies, including IBM, Google, BEA Systems, Red Hat, Borland Software, Novell, Oracle, Yahoo, PHP tool maker Zend Technologies, e-mail company Zimbra, and phone-software company Openwave Systems. The Eclipse Foundation, the Mozilla Corporation and the Dojo Foundation also intend to participate in the project.

Adobe to release Flex beta

Source: Adobe to release Flex beta

Summary:
Adobe is expected on Wednesday to release a beta edition of Flex 2.0 and make licensing changes to encourage broad adoption of the Flash development tool set.

Flex products, originally from Macromedia, are aimed at professional software developers who write Web applications that use the Flash presentation system.

The product line includes an integrated development environment based on the Eclipse software, as well as "frameworks," or prewritten code to speed application development. There is also a server component for corporate applications that tap into back-end systems.

The beta of Flex 2.0 is scheduled to be available for download on Wednesday from the Adobe Labs Web site, along with Adobe Flash Player 8.5. A final version of Flex 2.0 is due in the second quarter this year.

BEA to ship Eclipse-based developer tool

Source: BEA to ship Eclipse-based developer tool

Summary:
BEA Systems on Wednesday plans to announce availability of BEA Workshop Studio 3.0, which will serve as the promised Eclipse-based version of BEA's developer tool.

"This is actually our Eclipse-based tool, the core of which comes from our acquisition of M7," last September, said Bill Roth, vice president of BEA's Workshop group.

Another highlight of Workshop Studio 3.0 is support for the EJB3 (Enterprise JavaBeans) specification for object persistence.

"The importance of this [product] is it shows the growing importance of the EJB3 persistence standard. We see Java developers clearly embracing EJB3 as their model of building with server objects," Roth said. "This product gives developers a head start on learning a technology that won't final until Sun [Microsystems] finishes the specs some time later this year.