The Eclipse Foundation released Version 1.0 of its Web Tools Platform project this month to help developers build enterprise Java and Web applications based on the open-source Eclipse development platform.
Tim Wagner, a senior manager at BEA Systems Inc., of San Jose, Calif., and co-chair of the WTP project management committee, said WTP 1.0 was to go live Dec. 19, with an update or service pack following in February.
According to Eclipse officials, the goal of the WTP project is to build a generic, extensible tool platform that developers can use to create Java Enterprise Edition Web-centric applications.
This project builds on the overall Eclipse Project and other core Eclipse technologies to provide a common foundation of frameworks and services for tooling products.
Wagner said the next major release of WTP will come in June, when the Eclipse Foundation is slated to deliver a combined release of its core project technologies, including WTP, the Eclipse Tools Project, the Test & Performance Tools Platform Project and the BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools) Project.
This combined release is code-named Calisto, and its goal is to “make Eclipse as a whole more than just a Java IDE [integrated development environment],” Wagner said.
Wagner said one of the WTP project goals is to deliver tooling products for exemplary purposes and to validate the underlying foundation.
The Eclipse Foundation launched the WTP project in July 2004 and had an earlier release this July, called WTP 0.7.
Developers have since been working with a release-candidate version of WTP leading up to Version 1.0.
BEA, which joined Eclipse as strategic developer in February, has taken a leadership role in the WTP project.
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Other contributors include IBM, Eteration Gmbh, ObjectWeb Consortium, Oracle Corp. and JBoss Inc.
Meanwhile, BEA has a team of developers dedicated to the WTP project, Wagner said.
“The revolutionary thing about the combined effort to ship WTP is that for the first time all the IDEs will use the same project model,” said Todd Williams, vice president of technology at Genuitec LLC, of Plano, Texas.
A Generic, Extensible Tool Platform.
The WTP project includes:
* Source editors for HTML, JavaScript, SQL, XML and other languages
* Graphical editors for XSD (XML Schema Definition) and WSDL (Web Services Description Language)
* J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) project builders and models
* A Web service wizard and explorer
* WS-I (Web Services- Interoperability) test tools
* Database access and query tools
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