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Sun Opens Modeling Tools
twofish writes "According to the Register, Sun is set to open source a few modeling tools, including their UML modeler, XML infrastructure and visual editing tools, and BPEL tools. The software, part of the planned Java Studio Enterprise 9.0, will made available for download as part of Sun's NetBeans Enterprise Pack." From the article: "By open sourcing its UML tools Sun is continuing its push against the rival Eclipse open source tools framework. The Eclipse Foundation has pushed UML and model-driven architectures for some time via the Eclipse Tools Project. The project encompasses an open source implementation of UML, called UML2, and a modeling framework and code-generation facility to build tools and applications that use a structured data model - called the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF)."
EMF? You're unbelievable!
There are 2 kinds of people in this world. Those that can keep their train of thought,
I see there are some XML tools included in this offering. I haven't been able to find out if there is a decent XML Schema editor included. I would really like to get a free XML Schema editor that is as good as XMLSpy.
Read Epic the first RPG novel.
For the benefit of the grouchy mod that didn't find this funny, EMF were a UK band who had a chart-topping hit - "Unbelievable".
Made me laugh anyway - sorry, no mod points today.
Sadly there is no visual component to this. It's simply the framework. I'm still using Argo. http://argouml.tigris.org/
www.bannination.com Two things float to the top he
Well I've used UML on every large project I've worked on since about 1999 and its been absolutely invaluable. Obviously its not the only way of communicating design but it is
a) Understood by most systems designers
b) Under by pretty much every developer I work with
c) Specific enough to be able to communicate fairly complex designs with, generic enough that it lends itself well to things (like distributed asynchronous messaging based systems) that it wasn't designed for.
Beats the hell out of re-inventing the wheel...
As an aside twofish - nice tunes...
I never feel sad when I get than feeling.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I am quite surprised that sun is spending so much money on software while its core copetency is in hardware. they paid tons for Forte, Netbeans, Seebeyond, Staroffice and has a huge software group. Other than Java and Solaris-10, not many people pay for any of the Sun software. Oracle, IBM, Microsoft have huge enterprise customer base from where they get majority of the revenue and use this to provide free developer tools and other free goodies, but what does Sun have? I guess, a way for Sun to achieve profitability would be to get rid off all software teams except Solaris, Java and focus on their hardware business. They should at AMD for some guidance. It stuck to its core business and today it is Intel whose stock price is very low while AMD is close to historically high.
Eclipse may have a lot of momentum, but I still think Netbeans is a better tool. I haven't really used either extensively, but from what I've seen, I like Netbeans a lot more. There's room for more than 1 IDE in the world, just like there's room for Gnome and KDE. Remember, MS Office has a lot of momentum too, but that doens't mean Sun should abandon star/open office.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The advances in the Java IDE space over the last four years have been fantastic. Whether you are a fan of Netbeans, Eclipse, another IDE, or even if you don't use Java, this competition should be a nice reminder of how a working market produces innovative products at a nice pace. (AMD vs. Intel is another example.)
... only one manufacturer for OS-X.
It is a sad reminder of Microsoft's (criminal) monopoly, and the governments unwillingness to intervene, that for the vast majority of consumers, there has been very little of this "competitive energy" in the Operating System space. Sure, they can buy an Apple, but even there
I'm running a nice 3-d enhanced desktop (Xgl) in Linux, but I see Windows users have another six months, minimum, to see anything comperable.
Imagine what the tech world would be like if the Operating System market was as competitive as NetBeans vs. Eclipse.
These are developer tools. Their sourcecode is open. Their consumers are developers.
Where's the adapter code that plugs each development platform's modules into the other's framework? This is the best case for open software discarding arbitrary vendor boundaries I've ever heard.
--
make install -not war
Eclipse is not what you may think it is. Eclipse is the community front-end for the expensive IBM WSAD environment. Most of the places I've worked that use Eclipse do so because they see it as an alternative to the WSAD tools, and they're using WebSphere as the eventual platform; which is truly irrelevant if the software is written corectly.
NetBeans is much more like it looks. Formerly it was the community front-end for Sun's expensive Forte environment, but Sun has since abandoned that for truly the community-driven IDE, backing it with every visit to the JDK download page. And it works just fine with all of the Java application/servlet environments, whether Sun released them or not.
NetBeans is also pure Java, written on Swing, while Eclipse uses its proprietary SWT, which uses native calls to get its GUI work done. You can take the same archive of NetBeans to any J2SE-enabled desktop and it'll work. Not so with Eclipse. Because of this, it's easier to adopt new releases and plug-ins in NetBeans than it is for Eclipse. Many of the third-party add-ons for Eclipse assume or require Windows, and therefore don't work on LINUX, Solaris, Mac, or any of the other envornments. Not so with NetBeans; the plug-ins are also Java, so they work everywhere NetBeans does.
I was a long-time advocate of NetBeans before Eclipse came in to dominate the workplace. Eclipse does win some robustness categories, and its rapid-development bits are a little better (auto-complete/suggest kicks over NetBeans), but both are modular and extendable, and NetBeans has usually come with the tools needed to get the job done before Eclipse has (early GUI editor, and built-in Tomcat, Ant, JUnit...).
And, yes, I do most of my development in Eclipse, but I check out each release of NetBeans, and even try to continue to evangelize it.
Try not to be one who thinks that everyone should just join the "leader" as it often stifles competition, advances, and options. Someday Eclipse will catch up and have a GUI editor, BEPL and UML GUI tools, and some of the other flexibilites that NetBeans 5.5 has now.
End the FUD
pssst... I have a secret for you... companies that do things purely out of altruism don't exist for long. Of course Sun is doing Java to benefit Sun. Otherwise the shareholds sure would be pissed!
Why do some people think that companies trying to make money is a dirty little secret? Its the whole point!
Jeremy
I don't have a problem with a company making money off of a product. I have a problem with a company actively subverting other people's altruism in order to maintain a stranglehold on profit. Don't confuse me with an open-source-only hippie, but at the same time the Eclipse people deserve better than Sun trying to flush them out just to keep Java on a tight leash.
It'll be a cold day in hell before Sun releases the source code to any software that people actually use.
You mean like source to the jdk, j2ee, and various reference implementations?
It'll be a cold day in hell before Sun releases the source code to any software that people actually use.
You have got to be joking. Apart from the fact that anyone can download the source code for Java, they have open sourced huge amounts. Solaris is very widely used, especially in commercial environments. NetBeans is a very widely used Java IDE, and there is, of course Open Office.
The NetBeans tools may be great, but NetBeans' time has passed. Eclipse now has very strong momentum.
The statistics of IDE use disagree with you. Both Eclipse and NetBeans have very strong momentum. NetBeans use has been increasing dramatically recently. The reason? NetBeans has so much included in the base system, such as J2EE development and GUI designers. With NetBeans 4, powerful refactoring facilities were added (at last!), and with NetBeans 5 there is now one of the best GUI designers (Matisse) ever released.
It is important for the future health of Java development that there should be a choice of quality IDEs. If there is just one, then it can have excessive influence. A recent example of this was Eclipse's late support for Java 1.5. Many developers held back on the use of Java 1.5 because Eclipse did not support it.
Eclipse is the most widely used Java IDE, but NetBeans (and others, such as IntelliJ) are very widely used as well.
There has always been need for a great open source UML modeling tool, hopefully people will start designing 'more' with tools like this readily available. Other tools experience:
Thank you Sun for helping the developer community.
Ding Ding - Wrong, but thanks for playing!
g uage
Unified Modelling language is used by Analysts, Architects and QA to ensure that an application will support the user or business processes that are required for the organization. It is best if it is used from the Requirements gathering stage onwards.
Use Cases are used to determine Actors (Objects) and Actions (methods) and to identify business rules and requrements which may need to be enforced programmatically. The use cases will result in specifications, which go to the developers, and Diagrams, which can be shown to the users and stakeholders to illustrate exactly what the system being designed will do.
If your software development efforts have NOT been user-facing, or have not needed to fulfill some business or operational function you may not have been exposed to UML where it is the most used and useful.
Check Wikipedia for more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Modeling_Lan
Cheers
I believe the GP meant "release the source" as in set it free. That's different from making it available to look at but not touch and not redistribute. Mustang is certainly not free (as in free) or open source.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.