Eclipse tops the list and illuminates all Java bei

Eclipse topped the list to illuminate Java more than a year ago, many people believed that the eclipse open source program was just one of the means IBM used to sell its own software. But now, this plan has become the source of innovation in the Java tool industry, so the work will be simple

the eclipsecon conference in Cairo on Monday sold out. Unlike last year, IBM's technology masters will no longer be the protagonists at the opening conference. Instead, the open source code foundation will highlight the latest board members, including IBM rivals BEA, Sybase and Borland, and explain in detail the more and more development projects eclipse has on hand

"eclipse is definitely the mainstream Java tool platform today." Thomas Murphy, analyst of meta group. "In the future, the eclipse organization will continue to vigorously advocate this universal platform."

ibm founded the eclipse alliance with a seed fund of $40million in 2001, and donated a lot of source code. Today, the organization has 91 members, including many of the world's largest software vendors. According to Evans data, eclipse is currently the most popular java development tool. Eclipse was separated from IBM a year ago and became an independent non-profit organization. After independence, it grew better, and manufacturers who were unwilling to join the association in the past, such as BEA, joined in succession

in fact, eclipse almost integrates most Java vendors, with the only obvious exception being that sun did not join, while Oracle's participation was not very high. But such achievements have been enough to make the previous years of industrial standardization a great shame. "The general trend is set." Bob Bickel, vice president of strategy at JBoss, an open source Java vendor, said that the competition in the formal Java tool industry he referred to was over. "Eclipse has just passed the critical mass stage, and manufacturers are happy not to bear the cost of developing new tools." He said

if Java manufacturers with full enterprise style want to fight Microsoft together, they need to have common development tools. The two camps often kill red eyes in order to win over developers, because programmers can affect how enterprises choose valuable back-end commercial program software

eclipse software is very similar to Microsoft's own development product in some aspects: Visual Studio. On the so-called Eclipse platform, programmers can use several different tools. In the front end, users can integrate a variety of tools to write plug-in programs or test applications. IBM takes eclipse software as the common foundation of its development tools, providing a variety of product combinations, a common user interface, and a mechanism for sharing information

Microsoft also adopts a similar platform approach. Third party manufacturers can write add-on (extension program) of visual studio, and developers can also write programs in many different programming languages

Mike Milinkovich, executive director of eclipse, said that this kind of manufacturer membership system is specially deliberately designed. He said that the rapid development of Eclispe software is due to the membership system, and at the same time, it is also a temporary step of the open source development mode. This is totally different from the general practice through standards organizations

"many innovations come from open source code," Milinkovich believes that standards should appear only after new software is invented. "I always think it's chaotic to innovate and take into account standards at the same time."

sun refused to join eclipse in 2003 After that, the company sent an open letter to eclipse with three indicators including the comprehensive wear value zmz, calling on the organization to join the Java community, rather than being a pawn driven by IBM. Sun attracts Java developers with its NetBeans open source program. After sun reorganized it last year, all of its development tool products are based on NetBeans software

however, some people believe that sun's insistence on NetBeans is not conducive to the company and the entire Java community. Stephen o Grady, an analyst at redmonk, said that as long as there is a set of software that can build plug-ins programs, there is no need to use add on between different tool platforms

"from the Java point of view, sun seems to be more and more lonely," O Grady believes that most software vendors choose eclipse rather than NetBeans. "Sooner or later, sun will have to resolve this split."

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at the same time, the eclipse foundation has also continued to step beyond java development. One of the projects, called web tools platform, is expected to be launched in July this year, Milinkovich said. BEA will join the organization and sponsor part of the source code. Another project integrating testing and performance tools was supported by the heavy system management company com construction elevator classification gb/t10052 ⑴ 996puter associates last year. This kind of bir is an indispensable part in the electronic universal experimental machine. T (business intelligence and reporting tool) product is a set of open source tools, which can be used by java server to produce various business reports. Another rich client project allows programmers to build graphical front-end systems on different desktop operating systems. IBM has tested the program in its workplace desktop software

because eclipse is a general-purpose tool suite program, Milinkovich said that even Microsoft can promote its own programming language by joining eclipse, such as c

"we are still waiting for Microsoft to come up with a strategy to deal with open source." He said, "if Microsoft wants to join eclipse, we must welcome it with open arms." However, Microsoft said that the company did not intend to join eclipse

milinkovich pointed out that just looking at the members of the board of directors, we can know the independence of the organization, and the long-term financial stability of the organization is absolutely no problem (the members of the board of directors pay US $250000 a year.)

eclipse itself is a super magnet that attracts software manufacturers and developers. When asked raaj shinde, vice president of architecture and strategy of Borland, why eclipse has become so popular in the past two years, he replied, "I'll answer you with the answer of an engineer: this architecture is really great."

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