Eclipse News

And how can we discuss the year in Java without mentioning the largest and most complex update ever engineered for Eclipse? Version 3.3, code-named Europa, saw more than 2 million downloads between June and the writing of this article in early December. That's certainly the most interest the project has ever gathered around a new release.

Based on technology from German logistics company Deutsche Post, Swordfish features an SOA runtime platform that leverages three popular projects: Service Component Architecture (SCA), Java Business Integration (JBI), and Open Services Gateway initiative (OSGi). SCA provides a common programming model and assembly description format while JBI serves as a common messaging model. OSGi, which is the basis of the Eclipse runtime platform, provides common deployment and runtime component models in Swordfish.

In this tutorial I propose a quick step-by-step guide to start developing your OSGi bundles using Eclipse IDE and a standalone Equinox implementation.

We will begin by first describing the BIRT designer, which is used to build report designs, and conclude by discussing the example BIRT Viewer, which is used to deploy the designs and generate the completed reports.

Eclipse and OMG are jointly organising two one-day symposia to promote and build on the partnership between Eclipse's open source software and OMG's open standards - one as part of EclipseCon 2008 in Santa Clara, the other during the OMG Technical Meeting in Ottawa. Each symposium will be organised as a series of discussion sessions on corresponding OMG standards and Eclipse projects. In each case the purpose will be to discuss the alignment between current standard and implemented software, and identify areas where the cooperation could be further improved in future.

froglogic GmbH today announced version 3.3 of the leading, cross-platform automated GUI testing tool Squish. Squish supports creating and running automated GUI tests of applications based on many user interface technologies including Trolltech's Qt, Java AWT/Swing/NetBeans, Java SWT/Eclipse RCP, Web/HTML/AJAX and Mac OS X Carbon/Cocoa. Squish is being successfully used in QA departments across the world in companies such as Reuters Financial Software, EADS, Siemens, Synopsys, Xilinx, Trolltech and France Telecom Group.

Genuitec, LLC, the leading provider of the popular MyEclipse integrated development environment (IDE) and a founding member of the Eclipse Foundation, today announced the availability of MyEclipse Reports, a professional integration and enhancement of the Eclipse BIRT project. MyEclipse Reports is available on startup to MyEclipse Professional Edition users at no charge via the "Community Essentials" program, and provides an enterprise-ready reporting solution to the MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench.

Today, OSGi has become the platform of choice for many software vendors. The majority of Java Enterprise Edition application servers support or plan to support the technology, for example. In addition, many open source initiatives have already begun to integrate OSGi into their server-side frameworks. This trend certainly will facilitate adoption of OSGi in the enterprise. For the first time, we might have one software component model that allows for the convergence of embedded, desktop, and enterprise software development. It's about time.

The Eclipse Community Awards are an annual event designed to show appreciation to individuals and technologies that make Eclipse a stronger community. There are two categories of awards - individual and technology. The Eclipse Foundation is now accepting nominations for the awards, so show your love and nominate a person or product that has made a difference.

The EclipseCon 2008 technical program has been selected and is now available on the conference web site. Thank you to everyone who submitted a proposal to the program committee. The number and quality of submissions received was tremendous so the program committee had a difficult time selecting the sessions, but it has made the final program exceptionally strong.

In this podcast, we take that thought to the next logical step. Let's talk to the guys that make the tools for open source software. So in the above downloadable file, we spend 5 minutes with Mike Milinkovich, representing the leading developer of OSS tools, the Eclipse Foundation. We wanted Mike's vision for the Foundation for 2008 and beyond.

Visual Rules is the only Business Rules Management System (BRMS) that offers a consistent graphical modeling approach. In the spring of 2008 Visual Rules' vendor, Innovations, will introduce Version 4 to the market. It is available now for beta testing.

100% focus on Developers. This is the motto of CodeGear, the erstwhile Borland Developer Tools Group. As an independent company, the CodeGear team works towards advancing and supporting the product lines like JBuilder, Delphi, C++Builder, Turbo and InterBase. They are also innovating in new areas such as Ruby on Rails with their 3rdRail product, PHP with Delphi for PHP, and Java development using Eclipse with JBuilder 2007 and the JGear Eclipse plug-ins.

Genuitec, LLC, a founding member of the Eclipse Foundation, and fellow Foundation member, Codign Software, LLC, today announced that Codign's renowned CoViewDeveloper product will be made available to all users of Genuitec's Pulse. Pulse is a completely free software service that alleviates the frustration of managing Eclipse-based software whether commercial, free or mixed.

The Aptana Studio IDE is based on the Eclipse code base, but it focuses on Web development via JavaScript (vs. Eclipse’s focus on Java). Like the Eclipse IDE, Aptana Studio organizes development work around a project. Once a new project is created, you may add one or more files. The default installation of Aptana Studio supports JavaScript, HTML, CSS, ScriptDoc, XML and plain text as well as others. Plug-ins are available for working with other file types including PHP, Ruby on Rails, Adobe AIR, and iPhone/iPod.

IBM today announced that it is contributing the Accessibility Tools Framework (ACTF) to the Eclipse Foundation, an open source community focused on developing a universal platform of frameworks and exemplary tools that make it easy and cost-effective to build and deploy software.

The Eclipse Foundation member Gentleware AG has released two fresh Eclipse offerings, further expanding beyond UML to delve deeper into model-driven software development.

Business Objects is pleased to announce Crystal Reports for Eclipse support for the Eclipse Europa project. Over the last year, thousands of developers have downloaded Crystal Reports for Eclipse to help them embed the world's most popular reporting tool into their Java applications. With this update for the Europa project Business Objects continues to show its support for the Eclipse platform and Java developers…

Zend saw this as a great place to cozy up and has been developing a professional version of its PDT environment (released earlier this year) for over a year now. The PDT version is its open source freeware version of an editor IDE that's based on Eclipse foundation materials.

IDL, the Interactive Data Language, is the ideal software for data analysis, visualization, and cross-platform application development. The IDL Workbench is a cross-platform development environment, based on the Eclipse Platform. The IDL Workbench allows scientists, engineers, and developers to create and debug complex IDL applications.