Community News

It's hard to overstate the impact that open source technologies have had on the software industry. One recent example: Skyway Software, provider of an open-source code-generation framework for Spring-based applications, called Skyway Builder. The Tampa-based company last week announced the general availability of Skyway Builder 6.1, which is all about delivering Java EE apps for Spring. But the company started out going in a different direction.

He explained that the majority of Eclipse developers target Windows, and that Eclipse could serve as an onramp to help bring developers to Microsoft's platforms. "It's a win-win for both parties," he declared, noting that 84% of all Eclipse downloads are for the Windows platform.

The benefits of this approach are particularly strong when building multi-channel phone applications, since dedicated tools can be used for the specific technical needs of the different channels. Even better, many of these tools are available as free downloads such as the ones we take a closer look at here.

Today, DZone releases the Eclipse Modelling Framework Refcard, with all you need to get started using EMF, the most popular framework among Eclipse users and projects. Ed Merks was the primary author of this Refcard, with me co-authoring as a user of EMF. Here, Ed answers some questions about the Refcard and EMF.

As a user of EMF, I know how much this book has been anticipated, and it hasn't failed to deliver. This book will appeal to both long time users of EMF and developers who want to get started with the technology. Anyone interested in model driven development within Eclipse will learn a lot from this edition. So much in the Eclipse community is based on EMF that it is essential to understand it's architecture and capabilities.

Developers might get the picture, but Eclipse reckons it had better ramp up awareness its products among senior management as it moves beyond tools in 2009.

Eclipse Foundation marketing director Ian Skerrett has blogged it's important to help senior business and technology executives to understand the Foundation as it moves into runtimes.

Instantiations, Inc. announced v6.0 of CodePro AnalytiX, adding new OWASP-based security auditing rules, support for mock objects, new rules for web services auditing, and extended JUnit testing support for Spring, Struts and EJB (Enterprise Java Beans) frameworks.

The deepest differences may be in the language itself. Google chose Java, a language that's well understood by many new graduates. Then it built special plug-ins for Eclipse, so all of the lovers of programming Java with Eclipse can write code, push a button, and simulate running their app on the phone in a separate Java process. The tools are all available for free, and it takes only a few minutes to get the Hello World application up and running, most of which is spent waiting for Eclipse to create a bazillion objects of its own as it starts.

Learn how to configure a development environment targeted at the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet, including setting up Eclipse on a target development machine for the Python language.

DZone today launched the Equinox Refcard, covering everything that you need to know to get started on writing OSGi bundles for Equinox, Eclipse's OSGi implementation. The Refcard is written by the project's founder and co-leader, Jeff McAffer. I asked Jeff some questions about Equinox to coincide with the release of the Refcard.

Eclipse software experts Eric Clayberg and Dan Rubel today announced the availability of the third edition of their book, Eclipse Plug-ins, published by Addison-Wesley Professional. Building on two internationally best-selling previous editions titled Eclipse: Building Commercial Quality Plug-ins, the book has been fully revised to reflect the powerful new capabilities of Eclipse 3.4 and Java 5. book "Eclipse Plug-Ins"

The Eclipse based Ruby development tools have been around for many years and were widely used, particularly in Rails development through the extensions provided by RadRails. RDT and RadRails have both been integrated into Aptana Studio some time ago, and RDT's main developer, Chris Williams, has been hired by Aptana.

Stuart McGill, CTO at Micro Focus, said: “The release of COBOL for Eclipse is an important step for Micro Focus as we look to provide our customers with the tools needed to develop applications across any environment.�

Palamida, a vendor that sells software and services around open-source software security and legal compliance, has named 25 open-source projects companies should not hesitate to use.

Some, such as the Eclipse IDE (integrated development environment) and the MySQL database, are widely known. But Palamida also included software like the FreeType font engine and script.aculo.us, a set of JavaScript libraries for Web 2.0-style applications and sites.

The Sprint Open Software Platform offers support for existing MIDP Java ME applications as well as the CDC/Foundation Java Virtual Machine and OSGi framework. In addition, support for the Eclipse embedded Rich Client application model enables the platform to run generically-written rich GUI applications across a range of devices and desktop computers.

Genuitec announced today the production release of MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench 7.0. The new release, built upon Eclipse 3.4.1/Ganymede, delivers the most comprehensive environment for Ajax and Web Services in the Eclipse space.

Innovations Software Technology today announces the release of the Visual Rules Enterprise Platform 4.3, the premier Business Rules Management (BRM) Platform. The highlight of this release is the Team Server, a centralized rule repository, which provides for the team-based development and management of business rules.

Information Week has published my article on open source business intelligence (OSBI), Open Source BI Still Fighting For Its Share, a title that applies both to the BI software market and to IW column inches. (The article is now also an Intelligent Enterprise feature.) I'll share with readers material I wrote, cut by IW's editors, on open-source data-integration vendor Talend and on Eclipse BIRT, Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools.

It’s not a typical article title, but from day one of Eclipse Summit Europe these are the three main points I’ve taken away. I haven’t been to ESE before, but I must say it has really blown me away. I really enjoyed today – I got to meet a lot of people in the Eclipse community that I haven’t seen in person, and they are as helpful as possible. I really believe after today that Eclipse will become the definitive Java community. So, let me address these points one by one.

"You can think of g-Eclipse as a browser for what will become the World Wide Grid," says Stümpert. "It searches for and displays the resources that are available, and allows the user to access them. Complicated computing jobs which need more processing or storage than are available on the user’s system can be sent to the grid. Data can be transferred from the local computer to the grid and workflows can be managed."