Community News

A couple of years ago, I described the Eclipse project as open source's best-kept secret, and to some extent that's still true today. Even though most in the free software world have heard of Eclipse, they are probably unaware of just how far it has come from its origins as an integrated development environment for Java.

Today, the list of its projects is extremely impressive; more importantly, it has moved way beyond its initial focus on Java and development tools to address an increasing range of enterprise computing needs.

OSGi has been mentioned quite a bit in the industry lately, with Equinox becoming a top-level project for Eclipse, Felix being used as a container for Sling and Glassfish V3, and Spring-Modules being released. That said, a lot of people who are unfamiliar with OSGi ... are still unfamiliar with it, no matter how much the people who use OSGi regularly know about it.

Coincident with JavaOne 2008, AccuRev Inc. announced the release of its process-centric software configuration management (SCM) plug-in for m2eclipse, the popular Maven plug-in for the Eclipse development environment. Maven is a Java project management and build automation tool used for building and managing any Java-based project to make the day-to-day work of Java developers easier and provide build and project management for any Java-based project.

Skyway Software, the experts in simplifying software delivery, announces today the Skyway Cup 2008 (Skyway Cup) developer contest. The Skyway Cup will showcase how Skyway Community members use Skyway Builder Community Edition (CE)

Spurred by the rapid adoption of its initial Eclipse-based integrated development environment (IDE) for MSP430 microcontrollers (MCU), Texas Instruments Incorporated today announced the release of Code Composer Essentials (CCEssentials) v3. CCEssentials v3 for MSP430 provides major upgrades designed to enhance performance, emulation and ease-of-use, all at a very low cost. Leveraging the design flexibility and interoperability enabled by the Eclipse open source platform, designers can easily integrate plug-ins for a highly customized, interoperable and flexible IDE.

Additionally, we have awarded two special prizes for the initiatives we considered groundbreaking. The VRM project lead by Doc Searls is from our point of view a very innovative approach to bring the concept of user-centric identity to customer management. During the VRM Unconference 2008 this topic has been intensively discussed for the first time in Europe. The second special prize goes to open source projects Higgins and Bandit, which we consider the most important open source initiatives in the field of Identity Management.

It's a well known fact among those working on SOA projects there is no such thing as "SOA in a box" or a silver bullet for achieving an SOA, so much as it is a combination of software infrastructure, design philosophy, tools and, of course, buy in from the top brass at any organization. It's, in essence, a series of pieces, each of which gets a project closer to its full statement of intent and purpose for building a SOA.

In part 1, Aslam Khan, technical director of PBT Group, introduced us to OSGi. Today, in the final part, he completes his argument about OSGi's applicability in the enteprise. In part 1, he discussed OSGi's problem domain. There, he explained issues surrounding dynamic class management and how OSGi responds to these issues. In this final part, he tackles the two other problem areas outlined previously: the lack of versioning of Java classes and the lack of modularity in the context of classpath hell. How does OSGi fill these gaps? Finally, how ready is OSGi to be used for real?

Seit Anfang April ist der Softwarehersteller Puzzle ITC "Ad-in Provider Member" der Eclipse Foundation. Eclipse ist eine weltweit aktive Open Source Community. Das Eclipse-Projekt wurde ursprünglich 2001 durch IBM ins Leben gerufen. Die Foundation wurde 2004 gegründet als eine unabhängige Non-Profit-Organisation zur Unterstützung der Community. Die Projekte von Eclipse verfolgen den Aufbau einer Software-Entwicklungsplattform und dazugehörigen Werkzeugen auf Open-Source-Basis.

The open-source Eclipse Foundation announced four initiatives that address embedded and mobile device development. The new Device Software Development Project (DSDP) initiatives include a framework for communications among debugging and monitoring devices, and a Texas Instruments (TI)-sponsored project devoted to creating and configuring C/C++ tools for "highly constrained" devices.

The Object Management Group(TM) (OMG(TM)) and the Eclipse Foundation, which are jointly organizing two, one-day Symposia to promote and build on the partnership between Eclipse's open source software and OMG's open standards, are announcing the program for the second day of the event. The second day will be held during the OMG Technical Meeting in Ottawa, Canada on June 25, 2008.

Formation of innovation networks, in which partners, customers, and even competitors are included as part of an extended research and development team, was promoted by an Eclipse Foundation official Tuesday at the Evans Data Developer Relations Conference in Redwood City, Calif.
Eclipse's status as an open-source organization means that even competitors must participate, said Donald Smith, Eclipse director of ecosystem development. "In the open-source world, I'm also focused on getting competitors to work together," Smith said. Business process also is part of an innovation network.

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.