IBM Delivers New WebSphere Studio Tools

The new WebSphere Studio products include:

• WebSphere Studio Application Developer, now available for Linux. The new Linux tools, based on open standards, let developers build, test, deploy, and maintain new business applications. They include an integrated unit test environment that supports both Red Hat and SuSE Linux, version 7.1 or higher.
• A new version of WebSphere Studio Application Developer for Windows that now supports Windows XP and new multi-language support for English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese.
• A version of WebSphere Studio Application Developer for Windows and Linux that offers integrated Web services, Java, J2EE, XML, and Web development environments. With it, developers can create a variety of components, including Java, EJB, JSP, XML, or Web services, in one environment. For example, Linux developers can now simultaneously view and edit a Java class, a JSP file, and the resulting HTML page side-by-side, instead of constantly moving from one file to another. In addition, a new Web services client wizard can now generate a proxy that consumes document-style SOAP messages commonly used by Microsoft Web services.
• WebSphere Studio Site Developer, a new tool that lets developers create, manage, and maintain e-business Websites. It features integrated Java, XML, and Web services development environments, wizards and templates, and advanced rich-media image-editing and animation tools for creating advanced graphics for Web sites.

They join two other recently announced tools: WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition for Windows 4.1, which allows Java developers to visually compose Web services and build adaptors to access enterprise applications; and WebSphere Studio Device Developer, extending e-business applications to cell phones, PDAs, and hand-held devices using J2ME standards.

WebSphere Studio meets J2EE specifications and supports the latest Web standards including Java, JSP, HTML, DHTML, XML, VoiceXML, and Web services (SOAP, UDDI, WSDL).

IBM also announced new plug-ins to extend WebSphere Studio for building wireless, portal, and voice applications, available in May:

• WebSphere's first Everyplace Toolkit, enabling Web developers to create wireless e-business applications and portlets with HTML, Wireless Markup Language (WML), and Compact HTML (CHTML).
• WebSphere's first Portal Toolkit, enabling Web developers to create, test, debug, and deploy Web applications as portlets.
• A new version of WebSphere Voice Toolkit that debugs applications by pinpointing where the VoiceXML code needs to be modified to match the required application flow. The WebSphere Voice Toolkit enables developers to write voice applications, based on VoiceXML 1.0, the industry standard for voice application development.

According to Scott Hebner, director of marketing for IBM WebSphere: "Eclipse offers developers a portal-like approach to integration that unleashes greater productivity by simplifying the development process. Using Eclipse-based tools, customers can standardize on a single development environment and focus on building applications using best-of-breed tools from a variety of vendors -- and not devote time to the cumbersome, time-consuming task of tool integration."

IBM announced that 25 companies will deliver development tools based on Eclipse by mid-year, including: Computer Associates, Dassault Systemes, Embarcadero Technologies, Instantiations, Interwoven, MKS, Rational Software, Sitraka, Transvirtual Technologies, Versant, and Versata.

"Our customers are demanding products that support Eclipse-based development tools such as IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer," said Mike Taylor, President and CEO, Instantiations, which provides software products, services and technologies for Java. "Instantiations is committed to providing open, integrated and certified development solutions such as CodePro Studio. WebSphere developers can be assured that they now have the most robust and productive tool-sets available for creating next generation e-business systems."