Eclipse exec cites dynamic language inclusion, .Net rivalry
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(InfoWorld) - The Eclipse Foundation has established itself as a premier open source software tools project. The organization has gained support from vendors ranging from IBM (which helped found Eclipse in 2001) to Borland Software, BEA Systems, and seemingly every other major player in the software industry except Sun Microsystems and Microsoft. The EclipseWorld 2006 show in Cambridge, Mass. last week afforded those using Eclipse technologies a chance to get updated on the latest developments at Eclipse. InfoWorld Editor-at-Large Paul Krill attended and interviewed Mike Milinkovich, Eclipse executive director, about the state of Eclipse and subjects ranging from dynamic languages to rivalries with Sun and Microsoft. Â  InfoWorld: Where is Eclipse headed and what new technologies are on the horizon? Mike Milinkovich: Thatâs a open-ended question. When I look at the broad initiatives that are going on within Eclipse, a couple of things come to mind. First is continued growth and adoption around our Rich Client Platform, and thatâs something that we expect to see continued emphasis on. Weâre seeing more projects joining Eclipse around extending RCP in various areas, so thatâs good news for RCP. And as we talked about in our press release earlier this week, weâre very pleasantly surprised about the growing adoption and awareness of RCP. A couple of other things in just sort of broad terms [include] more support for multiple languages. Eclipse has always been focused on being a platform for the development of language environments, and weâre seeing some really interesting new developments, some of them within Eclipse and some of them in commercial products. In the commercial products space, Adobe is in the process of building and releasing its Flex Builder 2.0, which is an Eclipse-based development environment for ActionScript, which is their language for the Flex servers. And within Eclipse, in the next quarter weâre planning on having the first release from the PHP IDE project, which we think is really exciting. PHP [Hypertext Preprocessor] is a really important language both for enterprise development but [also for] Web development in general, and having Eclipse tooling available for PHP is something that weâre pretty excited about. IW: That leads right into my next question. Do you see more support for dynamic programming languages? You have PHP, you have the AJAX projects. Do you see more for some of the other languages that are out there? Ruby, Perl, Python? MM: Well, yes. Within the Eclipse ecosystem you can find Eclipse plug-ins and tooling for virtually every single dynamic language you can think of. Thereâs Eclipse tools for Ruby, RadRails is a project... These are not projects at Eclipse, but theyâre open source projects which are based on Eclipseâ¦ RadRails is an open source project based on Eclipse for building an IDE for Rails, which is the Ruby framework. And you have PyDev for Python, which is a fairly popular. This is another example of a plug-in, which is available from an open source project outside of Eclipse but is based on Eclipseâ¦. For virtually every dynamic language you can imagine, you can find Eclipse plug-ins to help enable development for it. And that really resonates back with what we were talking about previously about Eclipse being a platform for building development tools. Thatâs really the fundamental mission of the Eclipse platform. So within Eclipse, as I mentioned, we have the PHP tools. We also have the AJAX Toolkit Framework, and so this provides sort of added compiled debug for JavaScripts running inside the browser, so it provides an AJAX developer a very nice development environment for use with Firefox in building AJAX applications. And thereâs quite a few different AJAX frameworks out there, and it supports Dojo, Open-Rico and Zimbra currently, and I think theyâre definitely planning on adding more in the futureâ¦ And again, lastly I would mention the Rich AJAX Platform, which is a new project just getting started at Eclipse for providing an AJAX runtime thatâs based on the Eclipse component model for developers who want to use that style of development for building AJAX applications. IW: Which leads to my next question: Do you think thereâs kind of an overlap in some Eclipse projects? You have the Eclipse Rich AJAX Platform, thereâs also an AJAX Toolkit Framework. I know for the time being you have data tools in the Web tools Platform Project, you also have a separate Data Tools Platform Project. Do you think thereâs a lot of overlap going on or is it just based on which vendor proposes which project without too much thought given to consolidation? MW: Itâs a little bit of both. So within Eclipse as an open source community, we are willing to tolerate some overlap; let the projects work things out over time. And so far thatâs actually worked out pretty successfully. In the particular examples that you just raised, I donât see overlap. The AJAX Toolkit Framework and the Rich AJAX Platform, they donât overlap. Theyâre two very different things. The first one, ATF, is focused on the needs of developers looking for tools for building AJAX applications. And the second one, RAP, is a runtime environment, a runtime framework, for building AJAX applications. And on the other example, with Web tools and data tools projects, initially there was some overlap, but thatâs actually probably almost a poster child for project cooperation at Eclipse, because as data tools came to be and started to work, the Web tools guys moved their data connection layer and adopted the technology coming from data tools. IW: Is Eclipse de-emphasizing Java and refocusing on some of the other languages that we talked about? Is it focusing on some of the scripting languages as well as on .Net while de-emphasizing Java? MM: I wouldnât say weâre de-emphasizing Java. As Eclipse is growing and thereâs more projects joining the fold, there are more resources to take on more languages and more platforms. Now, almost every Eclipse project writes its code in Java. Weâre clearly heavy users of Java. But in terms of Java being the only platform or language that we support within Eclipse, thatâs never been the vision for Eclipse. Itâs always been about supporting as many languages and as many platforms as we can find people willing to work on projects for. IW: There's been some talk in the industry that Java is kind of yesterdayâs technology. Sun wouldnât like to hear that, but do you see it that way at all? MM: I kind of frankly take that stuff with a grain of salt. You know, thereâs this constant hype machine within the high-tech industry that the next shiny new thing is going to be the grand vision thatâs going to do everything that has never been done before. What my observation is, is that Java is now getting to the point where itâs clearly mature enough and stable enough to meet the needs of mainstream enterprise development and I think thatâs a good thing. Maturity isnât something to be ashamed of. Itâs something that the people that are talking about the shiny new things should treat with respect. IW: I guess thereâs kind of a trend toward putting the virtual machine on other languages. MM: Yes, and I think thatâs a great idea. Well, I think what youâre saying is thereâs a trend toward opening up the JVMs (Java Virtual Machines) to make it easier to support other languages. And I think thatâs a great idea. IW: Why? MM: Because the programmers want more than one language, but thereâs so much work and talent thatâs been invested in the runtime infrastructure thatâs part of the Java platform, that reinventing all of that technology for another language doesnât make any sense. You want to have a particular problem, which can be expressed more easily in a language other than Java, thatâs great. But you donât want to throw the baby out with the bath water. I mean you still want to be able to use this highly-tuned and mature runtime platform from companies like BEA and IBM and JBoss and Oracle that have spent years perfecting this middleware infrastructure for Web applications. You donât want to throw that out just because you want [to] program in another language. IW: How much money would you estimate is being generated by Eclipse-based software or is it still the main attraction to Eclipse is itâs all free? MM: I wish we actually had good numbers on trying to estimate the size of the Eclipse ecosystem. Iâm quite confident that itâs in the billion-dollar range and probably more, but we just donât have the hard numbers in terms of sizing that market. Unfortunately we havenât been able to get an analyst to actually spend the time to quantify those numbers. But what you said about the attraction to Eclipse being free, the economics of the Eclipse model is a little bit different than that, because the Eclipse community as a whole is almost uniquely focused on enabling a commercially profitable ecosystem or market around the free platform. So yes, we do provide open source tools and frameworks from Eclipse and those are provided for free. But we definitely are motivated across the Eclipse ecosystem to see people and companies make money from the Eclipse platform. IW: Whatâs going on with Eclipse as far as application lifecycle management? Some of thatâs on the agenda here, but could you maybe give a synopsis of whatâs going on there? MM: Sure. Thereâs several different projects going on at Eclipse in the area. Serena is leading a project called ALF, Application Lifecycle Framework, and Compuware is leading a project called Corona. And these are both projects that are in fairly early days, theyâre both in incubation. But application lifecycle management is an area where we see definite growth at Eclipse, but itâs going to take some time for these projects to mature and really hit their stride. IW: Whatâs the difference between Corona and ALF? MM: ALF is really focused on providing the technology for choreographing tools across multiple developers, and Corona is more focused on making it easier to integrate tools within a single workbench environment or within a single desktop environment. [There are subtle differences], but there actually are important differences for developers. IW: Like what? MM: You ask this every time we talk. [I am] just trying to think of a way to make it really simple to explain. I mean think if it as ALF is focused on choreographing tool integration across a whole team. Corona is more focused on making it easier for one developer in his particular environment to do his job. IW: This next question is about something you mentioned -- I guess it must have been last year -- at a conference in San Francisco. You talked about how you donât really need salespeople anymore. And I just met with a company (Genuitec) thatâs basing its technology on Eclipse and they donât have any salespeople. Do you see that as a trend where software companies, particularly open source software companies, donât have salespeople because they donât see the need? Do you see anything happening there? MM: I think that over time things are changing. What youâre really talking about is what is the channel by which people acquire software? Thereâs multiple ways you can acquire software. You can download it and use it, whether itâs for free or for purchase. You can buy it packaged or you can deal with a direct sales force and deal with people. Historically, enterprise software has been sold through the direct sales force channel, and I do believe over time, weâre starting to see success in open source software products in areas that have been traditionally the realm of the direct sales force. Iâm thinking of things like SugarCRM and Compiere and open source products like this. And those environments or those products have very, very low cost of sales, so as customers get more used to that, to being successful with that kind of software acquisition, I think that over time, yes, thereâs going to be fewer and fewer software salesmen. IW: Hereâs the standard question that I kind of usually ask last. Is anything going on as far as Sun joining Eclipse or merging NetBeans and Eclipse? MM: Nope, absolutely not. IW: No talks in the last year, two years? MM: I bump into (Sun executive) Simon Phipps at conferences and have a drink with him once in a whileâ¦. IW: There was one Java project that I guess Sun was working on with Eclipse. MM: There was a Sun committer working on -- it was actually on the base Eclipse platform to enable it for Solaris x86, as I recall correctly. So it was getting Eclipse running on one of their operating system platforms. IW: But thereâs no further movement since then? MW: No. And [in the] conversations Iâve had with Sun, theyâve made it pretty clear that theyâre not really interested in doing anything other than continuing to push their NetBeans strategy. IW: What do you think of their being two kind of rival camps? Is it good for competition? MM: Well, weâre certainly not shy of competition, and frankly weâre winning. IW: They seem to say differently. MM: Oh, good for them. I got the numbers, they donât. IW: Who do you see as your main rival, NetBeans or Windows .Net? MM: We clearly and have always felt that Eclipse is about enabling competition with Microsoft. IW: How have you fared there? MM: Actually, we started five years ago and I would say that starting from zero, the growth of Eclipse over the past five years has been absolutely phenomenal. Itâs been wonderful to see the development community embrace Eclipse the way it has over the last five years. IW: Is there anything else you wanted to mention? MM: Actually I just want to probably just close with reinforcing about RCP. To date, Eclipse has always been very much focused on tooling and being a tools platform, but what weâre I think really seeing now is RCP, Rich Client Platform, becoming a very important runtime infrastructure for application developers and ISVs who want to build multi-platform applications running on the desktop. And I think thatâs a very important niche for Eclipse and something that we expect to see continuing to grow.SEE ALSO:Eclipse chief talks up projects, awaits Sun and Microsoft
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(InfoWorld) - The Eclipse Foundation, with an open source technology release on Monday, hopes to alleviate developers of clutter. Eclipse Mylar 1.0 is a task-focused user interface that reduces information overload and makes it easier to multitask, according to Eclipse. Mylar addresses a fundamental problem: that IDEs have made it easy to browse large systems with thousands or millions of lines of source code but they present too much data, said Mik Kersten, the project lead for Mylar. "They overload developers with so much information," Kersten said. "[Developers] can often spend more time looking for the information they need by browsing and searching than they actually spend programming," Kersten said. Accessible here, Mylar enables developers to focus on specific jobs at hand by bringing a task list view into the Eclipse IDE. Developers indicate which tasks they are working on and Mylar monitors all programming activities to create a task context featuring all information relevant to that task. Contexts can be shared with other developers. Mylarâs name was derived from the plastic film used to prevent blindness when viewing an eclipse. In the case of Eclipse's Mylar, "it prevents information blindness when staring at the Eclipse IDE," Kersten said. "This integrates across the entire Eclipse IDE," Kersten said. The task management facility is called a task-focused user interface. Also incorporated into Mylar is access to issue trackers such as Bugzilla. By integrating issue-tracking into the IDE, developers no longer have to toggle back and forth between browser and e-mail client to use an issue tracker. Developers also can work with Bugzilla reports offline and then reconnect afterward. Additionally, developers can be summoned to immediately work on a task that can show up in their task list. Mylar's context filtering and task management drew praises from analyst Michael Cote of RedMonk. Task-filtering is automated, as opposed to it being manually done before, he said. "When I've used Eclipse in the past, you can manually create a focus that filters out everything. But with Mylar, it can automatically create that focus for you, so it's less work on your part to create the focus," Cote said. "Because it's done programmatically, it can get a better sense of things that are related that you may not think of." But Mylar's freely available innovation could encroach on commercial products, Cote said. "I think this is the start of something that could do that, certainly," he said. "There's always encroachment with Eclipse," Cote said. Rational with its Jazz project offers technology similar to Mylar but on a much larger scale, Cote said, but Mylar could be expanded with capabilities now offered commercially. Mylar in its first version is developer-focused while other technologies in the space have capabilities such as application lifecycle management, Cote said. Mylar can be embedded into existing commercial products, Kersten said. It solves the problem of developers having to cope with multiple task managers that offer an inconsistent experience, he added. Third parties also can innovate on top of Mylar. Vendors including CollabNet and Borland are committed to using Mylar, he said.
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Sun is working on technology to make it easier to run different languages on the Java Virtual Machine. Called the Da Vinci Machine, the project is being described by Sun as "a multi-language renaissance for the Java Virtual Machine architecture." The project features prototype JVM extensions to run non-Java languages efficiently as well as architectural support.Although many languages besides Java have been implemented on the JVM, including Ruby, the intent is to make the JVM more compatible with other languages, said Charles Nutter, core developer of JRuby, which is a version of Ruby to run on the JVM. "For the most part, almost every language that's more than five years old has some kind of implementation on the JVM," he said. ?The JVM allows programs using it to run on any platform supporting the JVM; it provides hardware and OS independence. Benefits like flexible online code loading and online garbage collection, in which objects are moved out of the way automatically rather than having to be saved manually, are featured.Da Vinci Machine is intended to overcome obstacles like mismatches between a source language's design patterns and JVM capabilities. Because the JVM was designed for Java and Java favors some design patterns over others, implementers can find themselves dealing with these mismatches, Sun said."Specifically, the JVM was originally for Java, and many other languages have features unlike what Java provides. We need to find ways to support those features," said Nutter.Some pain points to running new languages on the JVM include limitations on calling sequences and control stack management, finite inheritance, and scaling problems when generating classes.Nutter pointed out that Java, in being a statically typed language, differs from scripting languages like Ruby, which are dynamically typed. Thus, Java gives the JVM more clues about what code is going to be executed. Ways need to be found to let the JVM make the correct call for these languages, he said. In JRuby, this obstacle is addressed via a piece of code to inspect target operations.Capabilities of Da Vinci Machine are planned for inclusion in the upcoming JDK (Java SE Development Kit) 7, which is based on Java Platform, Standard Edition 7. Sun could not provide a release date for JDK 7. It is not known how many Da Vinci features might actually get into JDK 7, Nutter said.Da Vinci represents an experimental branch, or even a fork, of the JVM, said Nutter. He cautioned that fork in this case is not meant to carry the same negative connotations associated with forking of a platform.Java developers questioned liked the idea of Da Vinci Machine."[Da Vinci Machine] sounds like something I was thinking was going to happen and should have happened," said Daniel Hinojosa, an independent Java developer and a founder of the Albuquerque Java Users Group. "I think there's going to be a race between Java and the Microsoft [CLR (Common Language Runtime)]." The CLR has been likened to a virtual machine supporting multiple languages. "I think Java's a great language, but I think people like to program differently, whether it's a functional language or a scripting language," he said. Hinojosa said has been running JRuby, Groovy, and Java on the JVM.Developer Alex Miller, tech lead at Java clustering technology vendor Terracotta, also agreed with the Da Vinci Machine effort."There are lots of people writing and running dynamic languages on the JVM these days, and there are certain things that are complicated or obscure with the use of [dynamic] languages," Miller said.A lot of dynamic languages differ from Java in that they leverage functions rather than objects, Miller said. Making them work on the JVM requires extra work, he said.Sun's JRuby project, meanwhile, is getting an upgrade. Version 1.1, due within a month, features a full compiler to greatly improve performance, Nutter said.
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(InfoWorld) - Cambridge, Mass. - Eclipse can attribute its success as an open source tools platform to a "secret sauce" enabling multiple organizations to work together, said Eclipse Foundation Executive Director Mike Milinkovich, in a keynote speech at the EclipseWorld 2006 conference on Thursday. The foundation seeks to build "the universal development platform," Milinkovich said. "I think really a big part of the secret sauce of Eclipse is about balance," with participants building shared tools and frameworks and then developing a profitable ecosystem of commercial products on top of the Eclipse platform, Milinkovich said. Unlike the Sun Microsystems-led NetBeans open source platform, Eclipse offers a level playing field for participants, he said. "The real answer of what I want to talk about today is I think Eclipse has discovered, perhaps invented, the secret sauce for getting organizations together that want to build open source. My dream for Eclipse is this becomes an institution that lasts long after I'm gone," Milinkovich said. Eclipse previously has cited downloads well into the tens of millions. Eclipse offers to all participants a Darwinian system of plug-in-based software extensions, with some plug-ins succeeding and others dying off, Milinkovich said. Participants each are on equal footing in the Eclipse process, with features governance, quality, process and predictability, he said. Milinkovich noted the organization has set its sights squarely on Microsoft in the tools arena. "Eclipse has done extremely well in becoming the premier alternative to Microsoft," in terms of size and scope of tools for its platform, said Milinkovich. He presented multiple stages of embracing open source, with the first stage being denial. "Everyone here knows companies that are in denial about the impact that open source is having," said Milinkovich. He stressed he was not speaking just of Microsoft but added lawyers at corporations also have been skeptical. Subsequent stages include a beginning user stage; a collaboration stage, in which a user starts to give back to the community; a champion stage, with more involvement in projects; a strategist stage, in which a business is built around open source, and an aggressive stage, in which participants seek to leverage maximum competitive advantage via open source. Eclipse offers stable release cycles, which boosts the ability of companies to build products on top of the platform, said Milinkovich. In June, the foundation followed this strategy with Callisto, which featured the simultaneous release of 10 different Eclipse technologies. An Eclipse user in the audience shared Milinkovich's enthusiasm, with one reservation. "I love Eclipse, I use it everyday. I think itâs a fantastic tool for development," said William Blinn, software engineer at Tamale, which builds an organizational and collaboration system for financial professionals. Eclipse, Blinn said, "makes everything so easy." However, the Eclipse platform still could use improvement in terms of memory consumption, according to Blinn. "It's kind of heavy in terms of memory," Blinn said. "If you load up the IDE and put a couple of big projects in it, it kind of loads your system up." Eclipse has been successful and now must face the challenge of continuing on this success, said Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions. "I suppose the larger question is whether the success Eclipse has had so far is going to be continuing and repeatable," Gardner said. For companies with an established business model, an open source model could be a challenge to adapt to, he said. Startups, however, do not face this obstacle, said Gardner, citing Genuitec, which has built a business selling its MyEclipse IDE. Milinkovich briefly joked about conspiracy theories surrounding Eclipse, citing one in which participants are battling "Samurai Burger," which is a code name for Sun. Although Sun invented the Java programming language that has formed a technology basis for Eclipse, Sun has not participated in Eclipse. Sun rival IBM founded Eclipse. Eclipse proponents presenting at the show on Thursday discussed projects slated for June 2007 release. That is when "Europa," which features a coordinated release of multiple Eclipse projects, is due. Europa is the follow-up to Callisto. Details of the next major release of the Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP) project were aired. WTP provides tools for developing standards-based, multi-tier Java Web applications. It features tools for HTML, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), JavaScript, XML, Web services and other technologies. Due to be a part of Europa, WTP 2.0 is expected to accommodate Web 2.0 concepts and Java Enterprise Edition 5, according to IBM Rational's Arthur Ryman, who is Eclipse Web Tools lead at the company. WTP 2.0 will incorporate the Eclipse AJAX Tools Framework as well as Eclipse's JavaServer Faces Tools and Dali projects. Dali features tools compliant with the Java Persistence Architecture, for persisting of objects into relational databases. The Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 specification is supported in Dali. Technologies from Eclipse PHP Tools Project, including improved Apache Web server support, and the SOA Tools Platform project, which has improved Web services support, also will be in WTP 2.0. Overlap with the Eclipse Data Tools Project will be eliminated in version 2.0. In the meantime, WTP version 1.5.1 and 1.5.2 are expected in late-September and February as maintenance releases to fix bugs in Callisto. The SOA Tools Platform also is expected to be released in June 2007, although it is likely to be offered separately from Europa, said Iona Distinguished Engineer Oisin Hurley, who is participating in the project. The group developing the platform must first coordinate the various technologies within the platform itself before it moves on to synchronizing it with Europa. The Europa release is to feature no clashing amongst component projects in areas such as naming conventions and versioning, Hurley said.Â Â  "We're trying to make the actual development of SOA simpler," with the SOA project, through integrations of multiple technologies within it, said Hurley. Also, a preview release of the Eclipse Rich AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) Platform is expected in a couple of weeks, said Jochen Krause, CEO of Innoopract, and also the lead on the project. The platform features a runtime intended to enable developers to build rich AJAX-enabled Web applications by using the Eclipse development model, plug-ins and a Java-only API. The general release of the platform will be part of Europa, Krause said. Jim Russell, director of App Development Tools for the Lotus Software group at IBM, acknowledged at the conference that the company has an interest in the Ruby programming lanuage but no product plans, at least not at the moment. "We've got some internal projects experimenting with Ruby," Russell said. "It's one of the technologies that people are talking about these days," so IBM is taking a look at it, Russell said.
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The Eclipse PHP Development Tools project, which invites millions of Web scripters to the integrated development environment, incites changes for Zend Technologies.
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REDMOND, Wash. -- Help is on the way for developers struggling with using the Visual Studio 2005 development platform with Windows Vista, a Microsoft official stressed at the Microsoft SOA and Business Process Conference here on Tuesday.During a question-and-answer panel session, an audience member characterized the experience of using Visual Studio 2005 with Vista as "miserable." He wondered if the upcoming Visual Studio 2008 upgrade would be an improvement."Is the '08 experience on Vista likely to be better?" the questioner asked. Also known as Orcas, Visual Studio 2008 is due by the end of this year."It unequivocally is better," responded Dino Chiesa, Microsoft director of the .Net Framework. He advised the audience member to download the Orcas beta release and see the difference."We tried to be transparent about that, that Orcas was the Visual Studio release that was built to target Vista," Chiesa said.Other improvements also are awaited in Orcas, such as an improved build system in Visual Studio Team System for continuous integration."The performance and scalability of Team System is way enhanced," said Chiesa.But another audience member took issue with the use of templates in Orcas, saying distribution of templates was ad hoc. Chiesa responded there are some improvements in the general release with regard to templates.In a related issue raised during the session, Microsoft's J.R. Arredondo, senior product manager for Microsoft Office, said the company sees its Popfly technology, for quick creation of applications such as mashups and widgets, as a model for the future. The Office business application strategy at its core is about bringing simplicity and usability to the masses, Arredondo said.Another audience member, apparently a Microsoft business partner, asked how he would be able to sell Microsoft's BizTalk Server integration software with the company making available related technologies in the operating system and .Net Framework such as Windows Communication Framework and Windows Workflow.But Microsoft's Sam Guckenheimer, group product manager, countered that while he is passionate about capabilities for developers, users still would need a server platform for functions such as deploying an application across multiple farms.
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The Eclipse Project (who recently announced, in conjunction with Zend, the release of the PHP IDE PDT 1.0) are putting on a live webinar covering the software and its release.   This webinar will include a short history about the PHP Development Tools framework project, some statistical information (downloads, committers, bugs) and a demonstration of the project. The demonstration includes the different perspectives (PHP and PHP Debug) and the different views under each perspective. We will go through the creation of a PHP project, a PHP file and a debug session, where we will illustrate the debug features. During the presentation we will also see the relations to the WTP project which the PHP project is based on.   The event will be happening October 2nd (2007) at 9am PDT/12pm EDT/4pm GMT and will run about an hour. To attend, head to the event's page and click on the "Register" button on the right.
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(InfoWorld) - Ingres began offering a software bundle on WednesdayÂ to make it easier for developers to build Eclipse-based applications on top of the Ingres 2006 open-source database. The Ingres Eclipse Bundle brings together all the components developers need to create and run Java applications built using the Eclipse Foundation's open-source development framework. Available for download from the Ingres Web site as a single zipped file, the bundle includes a version of the Eclipse framework and the Ingres Eclipse DTP (Data Tools Project) plug-in, said Emma McGrattan, senior vice president of engineering at Ingres. The bundle also contains source code of a demonstration for developers on how to use Eclipse and Ingres and instructions on getting started with Ingres DTP. The Ingres DTP plug-in features enhancements Ingres made to the Eclipse Data Tools Project so that the development environment is more aware of syntax specific to the open-source database, making it easier to run SQLÂ statements and to debug code. Previously, users had to download the Eclipse framework themselves, find the particular plug-ins they needed, and use the Java Database Connectivity specification to link their Eclipse-based applications to Ingres, McGrattan said. Application developers within Ingres found that process time-consuming, and the company realized its users must also be struggling with the complexity. Ingres already offers bundles for the Python, PHP, and Perl scripting languages with support for Ruby coming next, McGrattan said. Ingres definitely plans bundles of its database with third-party software, notably around BI and application servers, McGrattan said. She sees plenty of opportunities for the vendor to "preplumb" or do the necessary integration legwork for customers between Ingres 2006 and other applications. "There are already projects underway at Ingres to build on top of Project Icebreaker as an appliance solution," she added. Expected to ship shortly, Icebreaker is a tight integration of the Ingres database with a version of rPath's Linux distribution. Ingres would also look to offer bundles based on the other operating systems it supports -- Windows and Unix. McGrattan also commented on recent executive departures. Last month, Dave Dargo, the vendor's chief technology officer, revealed in his blog that he'd left his full-time role at Ingres, while Dev Mukherjee, chief marketing officer is set to leave Friday to join Sears. "The timing was unfortunate," McGrattan said. "But it's no secret we hired Dave off the golf course." Dargo retired from Oracle a few years ago after 15 years with the company, where he headed up the vendor's Linux strategy. "We ran him ragged last year with traveling," McGrattan said, leading to Dargo deciding to step back from his day-to-day duties. He remains a key Ingres evangelist and technical advisor, recently representing the company at an open-source conference at Germany and in several customer interactions. "Dev is a loss for Ingres," McGrattan said, but sheÂ notes Mukherjee is leaving a strong marketing team in place, including former Red Hat and VMware executives. The vendor is also hopeful that Mukherjee's new employer, Sears, might become a future Ingres customer. Ingres is looking for a new CMO but has no plans to hire a new CTO, she added. McGrattan doesn't expect any further upset among the company's executive ranks. "I've been with Ingres since 1989, and I'm not going anywhere," she said. McGrattan's tenure predates both the spin-off of Ingres from CA in 2005 and CA's 1994 acquisition of The ASK Group, which had previously purchased Ingres. Â
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(InfoWorld) - Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation for open source developer tools, is a frequent interview subject at InfoWorld. Given the popularity of Eclipse and its having attracted just about every major computer technology company, perhaps frequent updates from Milinkovich are appropriate. InfoWorld editor at large Paul Krill met with Milinkovich at the EclipseCon 2007 conference in Santa Clara, Calif., last week to get perspectives on Eclipse and issues such as the recent open-sourcing of Java. IW: We talked this morning for a few minutes about the theoretical Eclipse 4.0 platform.Â  What do you think might be in that? Youâre already covering about 80 different technology areas, so whatâs left to add to it and what might you expand on in Eclipse 4.0? (The current release of Eclipse Platform is version 3.2.) Milinkovich: The idea of doing an Eclipse 4.0 is mostly focused on the platform, so itâs not so much about expanding the coverage of Eclipse, as you put it. Itâs about the core technology that those 80 different projects build on top of. And frankly, at this point, I donât know, weâre really just starting the conversation about what the community thinks would be useful additions. IW: What constitutes the core platform? Milinkovich: Currently, the Eclipse project consists of a number of different frameworks, but they can be basically grouped into four different areas.Â  Thereâs Equinox, which is the basic core runtime for Eclipse. Thereâs the tools platform, which is the basic infrastructure for building Eclipse-based tools. Thereâs the JDT, or the Java Development Tools project, which is the Java IDE that most people think of when they think of Eclipse. And then finally, thereâs the PDE, the Plug-in Development Environment, which is the tool that you use for creating Eclipse plug-ins. IW: Where do you think you might go with the platform? Do you want to make it more scalable and add more languages? What do you think might end up in there? Milinkovich: I donât know. IW: When might there be an Eclipse 4.0?Â  I think you said not for a couple years. Milinkovich: Yes, not for a couple years. This is the very beginning of the conversation. The first question is, does the Eclipse community even think that doing a 4.0 would be a good idea? So these are very, very early days, and itâs very exploratory at this point. IW: Do you think it is a good idea? Milinkovich: I think probably, yes. On balance, itâs a good idea. IW: Why? Milinkovich: Because you donât want to be stagnant. You want to make sure that youâre evolving your platform. In any software project, itâs important to make sure that youâre constantly working to keep the technology fresh and current. But we need to get feedback from the community before we make any decisions. (Editor's note: At an EclipseCon session held after this interview, attendees suggested a multitude of improvements for Eclipse 4.0. A blog on that session can be accessed here.) IW: Eclipse has been around since 2001 and was broken off into its own organization in 2004. What would you say is the value of the economy around Eclipse? How many products are being sold based on Eclipse? Milinkovich: Let me preface this by saying that these are my somewhat informed guesses. We donât have hard numbers on a lot of these different things. But in terms of the number of products that are built on Eclipse, itâs clearly in the hundreds if not, perhaps, even in the low thousands. In the embedded space alone there are probably hundreds of products. I have a Google Alert for Eclipse embedded, and Iâm constantly getting bombarded by new products in that space. In terms of the overall dollar value, I donât really know, but Iâm pretty confident that itâs well over $1 billion, in terms of the size of the entire ecosystem. And Iâd love to find somebody whoâs willing to do a free study to give us better numbers. IW: You mentioned this morning that Eclipse may become as big with runtimes as it has been with tools. Could you talk about that? Milinkovich: This is really around taking the Eclipse platform, which is this OSGi-based (Open Services Gateway initiative) plug-in model, and starting to see people build applications with it rather than simply tools. If you go back to Eclipse 3.0, thatâs the first release, this was in 2004. That was the first release was shipped, [featuring] the Rich Client Platform. The first Eclipse runtime at that point was on the desktop. Since then, weâve had the embedded Rich Client Platform Project to bring that technology to devices, and we have several different projects at Eclipse that are bringing the same technology to the server. So we see a lot of growth and a lot of interest in leveraging this technology in applications and in products. And I think Oracleâs announcement this morning is a great example of the building of momentum around this idea. IW: The Oracle TopLink announcement? Milinkovich: Yes, the Eclipse Persistence Project. IW: The two big holdouts from joining Eclipse are Sun Microsoft and Microsoft. We discussed Microsoft this morning, as you know. Do you see those two companies eventually joining Eclipse? Milinkovich: Well, first of all, the door is always open. Weâd love to have them. There havenât been any recent discussions with either group, so I donât think thereâs any change with either company. I think the one thing thatâs happened recently is Eclipse joined the Java Community Process. But there hasnât been any interest in Sun participating in Eclipse that Iâm aware of. IW: Also this morning we discussed OSGi. Could you just reiterate the importance of OSGi to Eclipse? Milinkovich: OSGi is the open standard that we base the Eclipse runtime on top of. So Eclipse Equinox, for example, is an implementation of the OSGi specification, and it is the heart of everything that we do at Eclipse. One of the things about Eclipse [that] makes it a little bit unique is that we have an architectural constant that goes through all the projects at Eclipse. Everything we do at Eclipse is about building plug-ins, which are effectively OSGi bundles, and so thereâs this very strong link between everything we do at Eclipse and fostering greater adoption of the OSGi specifications. Basically everything we do at Eclipse is extending and growing the OSGi community. IW: What is the purpose of the OSGi developer conference thatâs happening concurrent with this one? Milinkovich: There are so many interrelationships between the two groups, and thereâs so much interest within the Eclipse community about OSGi. We decided that there was going to be enough overlap in content that it would make sense to have them come here, and they were definitely interested in doing that. IW: I think I read that there about 1,300 attendees at EclipseCon. Milinkovich: Yes. IW: I've been looking at attendee badges. It seems like most of them are from different commercial software vendors. Is that the makeup of most of the attendees here? Milinkovich: The demographic, if you will, for EclipseCon is developers either working on the Eclipse platform or using the Eclipse platform to build products. And so that is probably the bulk of the badges youâll see here at EclipseCon. IW: What are the goals for your organization in the next year or so? Do you expect to just complete some of the projects or continue with a lot of the projects youâre going for? Milinkovich: We are an open source community, so itâs about the code. And so the goals for our organization this year are primarily around taking the projects that are just getting started and making sure that they get their first releases out the door, and [with] the projects that are more established, making sure that they continue to grow their group of adopters and make sure that they continue to build product-ready technologyÂ  The big event every year at Eclipse is when we ship our annual release train, and this year the Eclipse Europe release train going out in June has currently 22 projects. IW: And thatâs about providing unified releases of everything at the same time? Milinkovich: Itâs not a single large software release. Itâs 22 Eclipse projects shipping on the same day. And thatâs still very valuable to the Eclipse community because they have been at least somewhat tested in terms of their ability to load up into the same workbench and work together, but the primary reason why we do it is so that commercial adopters of the technology can have all of the projects that they need to build their products. IW: Do you think the concept of open source has reduced or raised revenues for software companies? Iâve had it mentioned to me that open source reduces revenues for everybody. Milinkovich: On the whole, I would say that open source has been a very large benefit for software companies and the software industry as a whole. Yes, for any one particular company you can say their revenue went down. But for every company like that you can find other companies whose revenue has gone up. People have made some very large businesses around open source. So I think that itâs been a good thing for the industry. It allows people to build more innovative products because they can focus on their differentiating value, the thing that matters to their customers, and spend less time building the infrastructure underneath them. I think itâs actually accelerated the rate of innovation within the software industry. And the other thing Iâd point out is that there are a number of very large companies whose business model would basically not work without open source. IW: What companies would those be? Milinkovich: Google would be a good example. The software costs alone of outfitting however many thousands of servers Google has would be astronomical if they didnât have the ability to create an open source stack to run on those machines. So I think thatâs probably the best example, or the most obvious example. IW: Whatâs Eclipseâs take on the open sourcing of Java? Milinkovich: I think it was a good move. Itâs good for Java to become part of the mainstream of open source development. One of the knocks against Java for the last couple of years has been because it was a proprietary technology, that it was not something that many free software and open source people were interested in using. [Free Software Foundation President] Richard Stallman wrote the "Java Trap" article, for example. By making it open source, it brings it into a broader community and reinvigorates the ecosystem around it, and it hopefully will attract even more developers and greater innovation.
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Exec's comments come after Sun decides to release Java code under the less-controversal version 2 of the General Public License.
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Adobe Integrated Runtime paves the way for Web applications that perform like desktop-bound programs.Images: Building apps on AIR
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(InfoWorld) - Dynamic scripting languages, a popular choice for Web application development, will be a top priority for the Eclipse Foundation at the EclipseCon conference, which begins Monday in Santa Clara, Calif. The open source tools organization will update two projects pertaining to AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), and it will revise the DLTK (Dynamic Languages Toolkit), which features frameworks and platforms to make it easier to use scripting languages such as Tcl (Tool Command Language), Python, and Ruby. Eclipse's ATF (AJAX Toolkit Framework), with features for editing, compiling, and debugging AJAX applications, is being fitted with support for the script.aculo.us AJAX framework, Mike Milinkovich, Eclipse executive director, said. This will be done with release 0.2 of ATF at the conference. ATF already supports the Dojo, Open Rico, and Zimbra AJAX frameworks. These frameworks enable interactivity in the browser. "The challenge to date around tooling for AJAX has been dealing with these different frameworks," Milinkovich said. Eclipse with ATF can help consolidate the high volume of AJAX frameworks, which has impeded enterprise support for AJAX because of fragmentation, said Jeffrey Hammond, senior analyst at Forrester Research. "There's 130 frameworks out there. What we need is 10 or less," Hammond said. While ATF enables the building of tools to interact with AJAX frameworks, it also features tools of its own, such as those for profiling and debugging. Currently, ATF supports the Firefox browser only, but there are plans to enable it to work with other browsers, including Internet Explorer. Also, Eclipse will debut release 0.1 of RAP (Rich AJAX Platform), which provides a runtime for AJAX applications. Developers can build applications in Java, then decide whether to deploy them in the browser via RAP or on the client. A 1.0 release of RAP is planned for June. "You write your Java [code] once and then you can make your deployment decision later, based on what the customer or what your client wants to do," Hammond said. With the 0.7 release of DLTK, Eclipse will support Tcl. Version 1.0 of DLTK, due in June, will back Ruby and Python. DLTK provides facilities to build IDEs for scripting languages. Eclipse, with its open source tools, enables commercial companies to develop commercial products that leverage base Eclipse technologies.Â
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Andrew Johnstone has posted some of his experience he's had developing with one of Zend's latest offerings - Zend Neon. Neon is the Zend project to bring robust PHP development functionality to the community on top of the Eclipse platform.   I've been using Zend Studio for Eclipse (beta) for several weeks in a rewrite of a framework and numerous sites at work and overall I really like the IDE. Its got some great features and being based on the eclipse project makes it really extensible and customizable.   He happy overall with the IDE but has come across some bugs in his time developing in it (nine of them) with issues ranging from the SVN functionality and samba out to small syntax sorts of things (like the auto-formatting).
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Ziff Davis - In an eWEEK interview, the Sun exec says he sees Solaris, Linux, Java and even Windows coexisting.
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ON THE SCENE - This morning, Microsoft's lead program manager for the Common Language Runtime team, Mahesh Prakriya, may have one-upped yesterday's C# demonstration of XNA game development just a bit, showing another XNA revamp of the exact same demo package but using Microsoft's dynamic language IronPython instead.
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Blog: The software maker has a testy back and forth with a software maker that has created a utility that interacts with the free version of Visual Studio.
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Vulnerabilities in the Sun Java Runtime Environment are described by one security expert as being "as bad as it gets."