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IBM’s Rational tools have once again captured the top spot in developer rankings, as users of IBM’s Rational tool suite said they are more satisfied with its features and capabilities than users of any other major software development platform.
According to a new Evans Data annual User’s Choice Software Development Platform survey, a competitive user satisfaction survey of more than 1,200 developers conducted in April, Rational topped all other development platforms. IBM Rational also won this distinction in Evans Data’s 2011 survey.
Rational was rated as the best in several categories, including application modeling, parallel programming or high-performance computing, support for multiple servers and remote development. It also generated the best overall score and topped eight other major competitors.
Microsoft’s Visual Studio was second with strengths in visual tools and declarative support and quality and size of the development community while Adobe Flash Builder was third.
The survey, conducted worldwide, is unique in that all scores are generated only by users of the products, Evans Data officials said. Developers identify any of the nine top development platforms that they use and then rate 18 elements of those specific platforms. A formula is then applied to discover relative rankings across competitors. Products need a minimum number of developers rating them to be included in the report. In addition to those above, other products that made the cut were SAP NetWeaver, Oracle JDeveloper, Eclipse, JBoss, MyEclipse and Embarcadero’s Delphi.
“IBM has shown significant insight into what developers want and need along with an impressive ability to execute and bring new features and capabilities into the already world-class Rational tool suite,” said Janel Garvin, CEO of Evans Data, in a statement. “That is what keeps them on top in the minds of the developers who actually use the Rational tool suite.”
The User’s Choice series is conducted several times a year and provides competitive user satisfaction scores on technologies such as application servers, software configuration management tools, databases and developer programs.
This IBM Rational news is timely, given that IBM will hold its Innovate 2012 conference, formerly known as the Rational Software Development Conference, June 3 through June 7 in Orlando, Fla.