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 winnerfor 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:
- SQL Server Integration Services: SQL Server 2005’s New ETL Platform
- Using the SQL Server 2005 Integration Services Class Library
- New HTTP Endpoints Create SQL Server 2005 Web Services
- Using DDL Triggers to Manage SQL Server 2005
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
Web Service Development Tool or Add-in
- BEA Aqualogic™ Service Bus
- CocoBase® V5.0 PURE POJO™
- Digg™
- Google™ Maps API
- Microsoft® Windows Communication Framework
And the winner is Google™ Maps API .
A series of articles on Google’s Maps API can be found at: Integrating Google Maps into Your Web Applications
Retrieving Map Location Coordinates
Java Tool or Add-in
- DJ Java Decompiler
- JBoss
- JRuby
- NetBeans Profiler
- IBM®WebSphere® Application Server
And the winner is IBM®WebSphere® Application Server .
For some insight into the product see Q&A with IBM’s Rob High on the WebSphere Application Server Product Family
JSR (Java Specification Request)
- JSR 82: Java™ APIs for Bluetooth
- JSR 135: Rich Multimedia API for Mobile Applications
- JSR 220: Enterprise JavaBeansTM 3.0
- JSR 244: JavaTM Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 (Java EE 5) Specification
- JSR 248: Rich Multimedia API for Mobile Applications
And the winner is JSR 244: JavaTM Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 (Java EE 5) Specification .
The JCP page will give you a great deal of information. For more material you can also see Java EE 5 Performance Management and Optimization .
.NET Tool or Add-in
- CodeSmith
- Lutz Roeder’s .NET Reflector
- Microsoft® AJAX Library, ASP.NET AJAX Control Extensions, & ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit (collectively “Atlas”)
- NUnit
- TestDriven.NET
And the winner is Microsoft® AJAX Library, ASP.NET AJAX Control Extensions, & ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit (collectively “Atlas”)
More information on this technology can be found at “Atlas” Foundations: ASP.NET 2.0 Callback
Open Source Tool
- NetBeans IDE
- Ruby on Rails
- Subversion source code management
- Ubuntu 6.10
- IBM WebSphere® Application Server Community Edition
And the winner is IBM WebSphere® Application Server Community Edition
Congratulations to all the people who produced the winning products. Thank you to all the readers who participated in the Development.com Product of the Year 2007 contest from the nominations through the voting.
To request an eps version of a Product of the Year Award logo click here
