The votes have been tallied for the Developer.com Product of the Year 2008 and in nine of the eleven categories the winners easily stood out amongst their peers. The voting was so close (with a difference of less than 2%) in one of the categories that we named a winner and a runner-up.
Technology
The finalists were:
Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX)
Service Oriented Architecture
Rich Internet Applications (RIA)
W3C® Semantic Web
Web 2.0
And the winner is AJAX for the third year in a row! Considering the connection AJAX has to Web 2.0 and RIAs (Rich Internet Applications), I guess this shouldn't be much of a surprise.
Framework
The finalists were:
Hibernate
Java SE 6
Microsoft® .NET
Ruby on RailsTM
Spring 2
And the winner is Sun Microsystems's JavaTM Platform, Standard Edition 6 JDK. Java SE 6 also received the largest number of votes when all categories were put together. Highlights of this new release include:
New parsing and XML to Java object-mapping APIs allows developers to build Web Services.
More Desktop APIs
Easier to monitor and manage
Sun has made Java SE 6 easier to secure with XML-Digital Signature (XML-DSIG) APIs, (PKI) and cryptographic services, and (Java GSS) and Kerberos services
Development Tool
The finalists were:
IntelliJ 7
MyEclipse
NetBeans IDE
Nexaweb Studio
Subversion
And the winner is NetBeans IDE. It makes sense that if Java SE 6 is the most popular framework that the NetBeans IDE would follow along those same lines.
Comments from a few of the nominators were:
Integrates all tools from developer, UML, Web Server, Servlet Container, Deploy, and now Ruby
Eases development with the best out-of-the box experience and management
Supports Java desktop, mobile, enterprise, and web application development as well as Ruby, C/C++, and JavaScript
Development Utility
The finalists were:
Apache Ant
Eclipse Business Intelligence Reporting Tools
Eclipse Mylyn
Firefox®
Parasoft SOAtest
And the winner is Mozilla's Firefox®. At first, we were surprised that Firefox was nominated into this category and that it ended up winning. After going back and reviewing the definition we gave for this category, we see how Firefox fits in. Development utilities are not used to create applications. They are used to support tools and utilities. Because so much is done in the browser these days, it is not a stretch to see why Firefox won this category.
Web Service Development Tool or Add-in
The finalists were:
EBayTM Developer's Program and API
Salesforce's Force.com®
GoogleTM Maps API
Project jMaki
Microsoft® Windows Communication Foundation
And the winner is GoogleTM Maps for the second year in a row. This is still a very popular service and can be implemented in so many different ways.
Wireless/Mobile Development Tool or Add-in
The finalists were:
Dreamweaver® CS3
Microsoft® SilverlightTM
NetBeans Mobility Pack
Nokia Carbide
Sun Java Wireless Toolkit
And the winner is NetBeans Mobility Pack.
Comments from one of the nominators were:
Integrated UI for CLDC/MIDP development
Visual Mobile Designer for rapid development and prototyping
Target mobile applications for multiple devices
On-device debugging completes the scene of building and deploying to devices
New game builder
Database Tool or Add-in
The finalists were:
Hibernate
Java DB
MySQL
Oracle Database 10g
PostgreSQL
And the winner is PostgreSQL. This one surprised us and taught us something about our audience base. We need to do a better job of covering this topic! Postgresql.org touts this product as "The world's most advanced open source database" and after seeing the votes, they may just be correct.
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