At the end of the 1990, IBM began to develop Eclipse we know now. Now there is a high usage in the software industry, the successful application of this technology can now be seen everywhere. The main purpose of this article is to review the generation of Eclipse and explain its role in the current development tools, and talk about our view of the development process of this technology.
Overview of the Mid-final development tools in the mid-1990s
In the mid-1990s, there were several powerful business development environments. Microsoft's Visual Studio is moving towards a more utility direction. Several Java-based integrated development environments have also appeared, including Symantec's Visual Café, Borland's JBuilder, IBM Visual Age for Java, and more.
At this stage, there is an application server that makes the client program developer no longer cares about the complicated details of the operating system. For Java development, the market provides us with IBM's WebSphere application server, BEA's WebLogic, Sun's IPlanet. At that time, Microsoft provided MTS and COM was the runtime environment used at that time.
Main goal of IBM
At that time, the situation actually included two worlds: a tool that focused on development that can support Microsoft's runtime, and another focused on more open methods focusing on the Java platform. IBM believes that a more open IT method is to ensure that the user's long-term success is the best guarantee, Java development tools are the key to promoting development community development. Therefore, the goal of IBM at the time is to let developers closer to Java-based middleware.
We want to establish a common platform for all IBM development tool products to avoid repetition of the most common elements in the infrastructure. This allows customers who have been developed by different parts of IBM to switch from one tool to another tool, there is a more complete experience. We envision the user's full development environment combines multiple different types of tools, including toolboxes from IBM, user-defined toolboxes, and third-party tools. This mixed but compatible tool environment is the beginning of a software tool ecosystem.
Establish technology: development of source code
In November 1998, the IBM Software Group began to develop a development tool environment, which is later, it is a familiar, the Eclipse. Initially we found a new Java integrated development environment based on our Object Technology International (OTI) laboratory, which includes a wider platform. The OTI team is a very widely highly skilled team and has experience in completing several generations of integrated development environments. At the same time, IBM began to build other teams to create new products on this platform.
We know that Eclipse is widely used, and the active third-party system is very important. However, when the business partners start, they are not willing to invest in our platform (due to not yet certified). Therefore, in November 2001, we decided to increase the authorization and operation mode of open source of open source and accelerated its application. IBM and other eight organizations have established the Eclipse Association and the Eclipse.org website. The initial initiator includes partner Rational Software, Togethersoft, and competitors WebGain and Borland. The membership of the association only needs to give Eclipse a sincere promise (but not forced), promised to use, improve Eclipse, and complete a product based on Eclipse.
The principle of operation of the association is to let the open source community to control the code, and the business group promotes the development of market and business-related relationships. This is a new application of a very interesting open source model. It is still based on an open, free platform, but this basic complement is to encourage commercial companies that create profitable tools above. Most of Eclipse's submitters and contributors come from a short commercial company list, this intermediate IBM is the greatest content, economic and staff contributors. But is it really open?
Prior to 2003, Eclipse's first main release was well accepted by developers and was used in power. But the industry analyst tells us that Eclipse is considered to be IBM control. Users don't know what Eclipse is. This idea allows the main vendors to make strategic commitments to it when Eclipse is under IBM control. If we want to see a more serious commitment from other vendors, Eclipse must be considered more independent - more and IBM separation.
So we started to explore how to let a more independent enterprise or organization to control Eclipse, eliminating this idea. Work with these companies, we help plan and create an Eclipse foundation. Then, we announced this new foundation on Eclipsecon 2004, we announced that the foundation is a non-profit organization, which has its own independent, professional staff with work remuneration, and is supported by its membership.
Saix to now
This change is successful. The new independent Eclipse foundation completed Eclipse 3.0 and launched Eclipse 3.1 in shortly, and the previous version ratio, both of the two versions have caused greater interest and usage. The release of the Eclipse 3.1 launched soon caused great interest. We have seen the growing growth of members of each level, and all independent tool providers and most platform providers have made deeper commitments. The Eclipse Foundation and their members have announced a few things in Eclipsecon 2005, including powerful Eclipse projects such as Rich Client Platform, Web Tools Platform, Data Tools Platform, Business Intelligence Reporting Tool, and under our efforts, we It greatly reduces the degree of fragmentation.
We can see Eclipse guarantees and support exciting growth. So far, Eclipse has 12 strategic development members, and each commitment provides at least 8 full-time developers and at least $ 250,000 investment to the Eclipse foundation. The Eclipse foundation has four strategic users to provide economic support. There are 69 companies as a plugin provider, and there are 13 cooperation members. If you carefully study the software industry, you will find hundreds of Eclipse commercial plugins and products. Eclipse is now the main non-Microsoft Software Tools platform in the industry.
IBM and ECLIPSE
In December 2004, IBM Rational Actively modified its products to pan off to the Eclipse platform. We call this result for IBM Rational Software Development Platform, which includes new improved IBM Rational products, which are directly above the Eclipse platform, as shown in Figure 1. This platform also includes other software lifecycle tools that have been integrated into Eclipse.
Figure 1: In December 2004, the main part of IBM Rational's software lifecycle tool is based on the Eclipse platform.
In this new platform, developer role tools add other features extended the integrated development environment of Eclipse, allowing developers to have higher efficiency. We have also developed a full software lifecycle tool for other practitioners, and we enhance the ability of Eclipse in each life cycle by using the potential mechanism of Eclipse. Eclipse has become our next-generation tool integration platform.
Prospective to the future
IBM creates Eclipse and is responsible for it more than before. Eclipse is a stable, mature platform and is managed independently. Most companies don't think using Eclipse has a big risk, in fact, they are comfortable from basic Eclipse to increase service support and additional tools with gradually increasing form. We see that commercial companies have begun to support this trend, providing more componentized versions of value-added tools and vendor support services. As Eclipse and its associated plugins continue to increase, the Eclipse foundation will be in a very good location to manage this growth and brought by it.
About author
Gary Cernosek is now a market manager for IBM Software Group Rational. He is responsible for analyzing and responding to software development market trends, mainly to software design and development technology, especially visual modeling and model-driven development. Previously, he worked in Rational sales, technical training, and customer consultation department. Before joining Rational, he is a software developer of NASA Group Sales and space station system, working more than 8 years in NASA. Gary Cernosek obtained a bachelor's degree from Texas University Austin, after the Clear Lake at Houston University, was divided into a master's degree in computer system design. The main research direction is an object-oriented software project.
