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What’s the most popular Java application server? Tomcat. What’s the most popular integrated development environment for writing Java applications? Eclipse.
Those are among the findings of a recent study by BZ Research, like SD Times a division of BZ Media. The seventh annual Java Awareness Study, completed in December, showed very little change year-on-year for enterprise Java developers.

Open source provides a way for CIOs to invest in new system development without coding themselves into a corner. According to Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, enterprise users of technology are catching on to something the ISVs have known for a while now -- that if you develop in an open source model and other companies adopt what you develop, you have a higher chance of longevity in the code base.

The Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi) defines an architecture for developing and deploying modular applications and libraries. In this first article in a three-part introduction to OSGi, Sunil Patil gets you started with OSGi development concepts and shows you how to build a simple Hello World application using the Eclipse OSGi container implementation, Equinox. He also touches briefly on building service-oriented applications using OSGi and introduces OSGi's ServiceFactory and ServiceTracker classes.

AccuRev Inc. announced the week of EclipseCon 2008 that customers are taking advantage of the new feature, usability and performance enhancements within its latest AccuBridge for Eclipse(TM) plug-in. AccuRev allows developers to access process-centric software configuration management (SCM) functionality directly within their familiar Eclipse IDE integration platform, enabling more familiar user interface options and increasing productivity.

With a release of the JBuilder 2008 IDE for Java development on Tuesday, CodeGear is adding a capability called Application Factories, which enables code reuse and makes it easier to update applications.

Application Factories features a methodology and tools to navigate framework choices, open source, internal code, and deregulated technology standards to determine use and reuse, CodeGear said. Developers can communicate intent, capture instructions and recommendations, and point to resources.

In this two-part article, Aslam Khan, technical director of PBT Group, a software consultancy based in South Africa, introduces you to OSGi and discusses its relevance specifically in the context of the enterprise. What is the exact problem domain of OSGi in this area? In this first part, he uses code snippets to show how the issues surrounding dynamic class management can be tackled. -- Geertjan Wielenga, JavaLobby Zone Leader

This article introduces some helper classes so you can quickly build and deploy feature-rich, reusable, Eclipse-based components for IBM Lotus Notes. You also learn how to create a foundation upon which other components can be created quickly and easily.

Eclipse's first claim to fame was as an integrated development environment (IDE) for Java technology. Eclipse's plug-in architecture is a big reason for its success. There are many popular plug-ins available, and it is very easy to create your own. These two traits make Eclipse a perfect fit for systems with specialized architectures, such as eBay. In this article, the first of a two-part series covering eBay's use of Eclipse, we look at eBay's architecture and how eBay has tailored Eclipse to suit its architecture.

Eclipse has become the premier integrated development environment (IDE) for Java developers everywhere. Eclipse is definitely not a one-size-fits-all system, though. Its plug-in architecture allows you to add the features you need. This is even more important in large organizations like eBay. Such organizations have very specific needs. Eclipse makes it easy to not only tailor a solution to those needs but also to scale that solution across a large organization.

I spend some time playing with Spring Dynamic Modules (Spring-DM) and Eclipse (resp. its underlying OSGi platform Equinox) the other day.

The Eclipse Foundation offered attendees at last week's EclipseCon 2008 conference an early look at plans for the next generation of its Eclipse distribution and platform: Eclipse 4.0, better known as "e4."

Genuitec, LLC, a founding member of the Eclipse Foundation, announced today the availability of Pulse 2.0. Pulse 2.0 features an enhanced catalog with hundreds of new plugins to choose from. It gives users the accessibility and freedom of choice to customize and share their software distributions.

"Our customers spoke and we listened," said Todd Williams, vice president of technology for Genuitec. "Overwhelmingly, our users liked Pulse's ability to package and organize their tools, but they needed more tooling options for their profiles.

SpringSource, the company behind the Spring Portfolio Java application platform, has announced its SpringSource Tool Suite, a Spring-specific developer tool set designed to reduce the complexity of enterprise Java development and maintenance.

Due in two years, Eclipse 4.0, or e4, was the subject of a presentation at the EclipseCon 2008 conference in Santa Clara, Calif. on Wednesday. It also was discussed by Mike Milinkovich, executive director of Eclipse, in an interview on Tuesday. He said e4 is not even started as a project yet. "It is theoretical at this point," said Milinkovich.

The goal of the joint work, which will include contributions from Microsoft engineers, is to make it easier to use Java to write applications that take full advantage of the look and feel of Windows Vista. Ramji wrote about the planned collaboration on Microsoft's Port25 blog.

Microsoft Corp. today announced its first collaboration with the open source Eclipse Foundation by committing provide engineering support to allow the Eclipse Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) use Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). The move aims to make it easier for Java developers to write applications that look and feel like native Windows Vista, according to Microsoft.

Research In Motion (RIM) has joined the Eclipse Foundation and released a BlackBerry plug-in for Eclipse that provides the ability to develop and debug BlackBerry applications without leaving the familiar Eclipse environment. The announcement came Tuesday at the EclipseCon 2008 conference in Santa Clara, CA.

PowerSQL is Embarcadero's fourth tool built on the open-source Eclipse framework, and the company claimed this new release will improve productivity for the growing number of application developers who are becoming involved with SQL development.

Embarcadero hopes to attract developers not traditionally used to writing SQL code to its latest tool, which it said features a rich SQL integrated development environment with code-completion, real-time error-checking, code-formatting and object-validation tools to help streamline coding tasks.

Intalio, Inc., the Open Source Business Process Platform Company, today announced support for the Business Process Modeling Notation version 1.1 (BPMN 1.1), which was recently ratified by the Object Management Group (OMG). Intalio|Designer is the first process modeling tool to support the new notation. The latest version of Intalio|Designer can be downloaded from the Intalio Community Website at bpms.intalio.com.

In seeking to keep Java standardized, Sun Microsystems has turned to an open source project lead by Oracle (NSDQ: ORCL) for its standard for mapping software objects into relational databases.