Each year Developer.com has its Product of the Year contest. We ask readers to nominate then vote on the technologies, tools, and programs that they think are the best in their field. Last year we said that the contest's results were the most clear-cut we had ever seen. This year's results were even more clear-cut than ever. In the main category of Technology, the winner dominated the category with 61% of the votes. Tools such as Apache Ant, which won Development Utility of the year, and Adobe Flash Lite 2, which won Wireless/Mobile development tool of the year, both won by some of the widest margins we've ever seen.
Surprisingly we had a shift in brand alliance, four repeat winners, and a winner in the Wireless/Mobile Development Tool or Add-in category that we never expected.
The finalists and winners
in each category are:
Technology
- Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)
- JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)
- Ruby on Rails
- Ubuntu 6.10
- Virtualization
And the winner, for the second year in a row, is Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). This is a category that many developers are interested in. Many times this is what developers would love to try out but never have enough time to investigate. See Bradley Jones' article announcing the Technology of the Year winner for more details on the technologies within this category.
Framework
- Hibernate
- Microsoft® .NET™ 2.0
- Ruby on Rails
- NetBeans Platform
- Spring
And the winner is Ruby on Rails.
For at good look at this framework read the article Ruby on Rails: All Aboard the Fast Train to Web Application Development
Development Tool
- BEA Workshop Studio®
- Eclipse
- IBM WebSphere®
- NetBeans™ 5.5 Integrated Development Environment
- Microsoft® Visual Studio® Team System
And the winner is IBM WebSphere®.
IBM highlights the key features of WebSphere as
- Application and transaction infrastructure
- Application transformation
- Business integration
- Commerce
- Mobile and speech middleware
- Portals
- Product information management
- Express Middleware
For more details take a look at the WebSphere features at the WebSphere home page.
Development Utility
- Apache Ant
- Fiddler HTTP Debugging Tool
- NetBeans Profiler
- Notepad++ 3.9
- PowerShell
And the winner in this category again is Apache Ant.
For more detailed information on this utility take a look at the following articles:
Database Tool or Add-in
- Java DB
- Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005
- Navicat ™ (MySQL GUI)
- Oracle Database 10g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE)
- TOAD®
And the winner is Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005.
Articles on SQL Server 2005 can be found at:
Wireless/Mobile Development Tool or Add-in
- Adobe® Flash® Lite™ 2
- SavaJe
- NetBeans Mobility Pack
- Sun Java™ Wireless Toolkit
And the winner is Adobe® Flash® Lite™ 2.
Adobe lists the key features of Flash Lite 2 as:
- Flash Player 7 support
- Multi-Platform support
- Dynamic XML data
- Persistent data
- Powerful and dynamic media
- Text enhancement
- Shape drawing ActionScript API
- Action Script 2.0 support
- Synchronized device sound
- Compressed SWFs
- Tighter device integration
IE 7
Firefox 2.0
