Flashline Inc. Tuesday announced a new adapter that integrates the companys reusable software components platform with IBMs WebSphere Studio Developer Tools.
Cleveland-based Flashline announced the adapter at the Software Development Conference and Expo East 2002. Cathy Lippert, Flashlines vice president of product management, said the integration of the companys Component Manager Enterprise Edition (CMEE) with IBMs WebSphere tools provides enterprise developers with a place to build, test and deploy Java applications using both new and existing software assets, including reusable components and Web services.
“We have an ongoing commitment to support the leading tools,” Lippert said. She said the IBM tools, which are based on the Eclipse open-source development tools platform foundation, represent a key class of tools that more and more developers are beginning to take advantage of. Oracle Corp. last week announced it had joined the Eclipse Board of Stewards for just that reason.
“Were seeing a lot of uptake on WebSphere Application Developer and Eclipse,” Lippert said. “Reuse is big there. We support most of the major integrated development environments and platforms, but for this level of integration, a platform like Eclipse is really strong in the larger enterprises.”
Meanwhile, as IBMs WebSphere tools are built on Eclipse, Flashlines adapter not only gives CMEE users the advantage of integration with the WebSphere tools, but also with the range of Eclipse-based applications, company officials said.
Lippert said Flashlines adapter employs the Simple Object Access Protocol and XML to enable developers to look for, find, and send or retrieve components and other software assets to or from CMEE without leaving WebSphere Studio Developer Tools.
IBMs Web services standards support and the strength of Eclipse made the decision to integrate with the WebSphere tools a natural one for Flashline, she added. The selection of IBMs WebSphere tools “was done as a matter of priority,” with other enterprise-level tools platforms to follow.
“This sets a pattern for how well approach this in the future,” Lippert said. Essentially, “Flashline is looking to broaden the means of software developers enterprisewide.”
