BEA gives Oracle new Java platform, Eclipse tools |
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By Rich Seeley, News Writer
02 Jul 2008 | SearchSOA.com |
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Oracle details SOA, Java roadmap with BEA
BEA gives Oracle new Java platform, Eclipse tools
BEA users draw up their own roadmap for Oracle
For Java-based tools, Oracle is making its JDeveloper IDE the foundation, said Duncan Mills, senior director product management for Oracle's Application Development Tools. But it is also maintaining BEA WebLogic Workshop, which is it is re-branding as Oracle WorkShop for WebLogic and making available free to developers, he said.
By fall, Mills said, Oracle will also begin offering Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse for coders, including a significant contingent of BEA users, who prefer working with Eclipse.
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If we look at the existing BEA developer community, they're mostly Eclipse users now.
Duncan Mills
Sr. Director of product management for App Dev tools, Oracle
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The Eclipse Pack, as Kurian called it, will provide a set of certified plug-ins, which Oracle describes as "enabling a development environment designed to support Java EE standards where Eclipse is the preferred Integrated Development Environment (IDE) within an organization."
"If we look at the existing BEA developer community, they're mostly Eclipse users now," Mills said. Many of those coders were assembling their own Eclipse environment rather than working with WebLogic Workshop, he said. Eclipse Pack is intended to provide those Eclipse developers with an environment they are comfortable working with, he said. Eclipse Pack will feature the latest code from the Eclipse Web Tool Project, he added.
Mills said the goal is to build "a really great Eclipse environment that has the flexibility the users need in terms of plug-ins, as well as stability and certification, so they can be assured that they can pick up a set of plug-ins from Oracle and they will work for seamless deployment to WebLogic. That gives them the ability to mix and match with whatever plug-ins they happen to be using."
Bradley F. Shimmin, principal analyst of application infrastructure at Current Analysis LLC., said Oracle is turning some of the BEA tools into Eclipse plug-ins. This also shows that Oracle understands that developers exert influence in product buying decisions, he said. "It speaks to Oracle's commitment to the Java developer."
Dana Gardner, principal analyst of Interarbor Solutions LLC., noted that the Eclipse Pack and its support of OSGi, which Eclipse is heavily promoting, shows that "Oracle recognizes that Eclipse is a force in the market."
In Thomas Kurian's, senior vice president of development for Oracle middleware platform products, presentation of the roadmap, he stressed Oracle's commitment to Java, which Gardner said put Java in a more prominent place than it has gotten at recent IBM events, and shows how Java-centric Oracle is even compared to Sun Microsystems.
"Oracle has a hell of a lot more business around Java than Sun does," Gardner said. "With BEA now under Oracle's wing and going through an integration process, I think we can pretty clearly state that Oracle is the number one Java supplier. If not in actual bits and bytes, certainly in their marketing positioning and go-to-market messaging. You go to JavaOne and Sun talks up Java, but Sun is a significantly smaller player in Java than Oracle is."
Oracle adopts BEA app server
For its main application server, Oracle will take advantage of BEA's market leadership and adopt the BEA technology, although it will now include complementary features from the Oracle application server, which also will continue to be supported.
"BEA WebLogic Server, the market leading Java application server, becomes Oracle's strategic Java EE container," Kurian said. "With WebLogic we've also integrated a number of features from Oracle's own application server, including object-relational mapping, and Java persistence API (JPA) called Oracle TopLink, which is the reference implementation of Enterprise Java Beans. That will become the strategic JPA and EJB provider within WebLogic."
Oracle's SCA runtime will be added to the WebLogic Server, along with Oracle Coherence, a JCache-compliant in memory distributed data grid technology for clustered applications supporting high performance transactions, he said.
The Oracle application server will continue to be updated, Kurian said, with particular emphasis on upgrades for Oracle eBusiness Suite customers. In keeping with the overall product strategy, those customers will not be forced to migrate to WebLogic, he added.
Oracle has posted the full roadmap for its BEA assimilation on its website.
Oracle details SOA, Java roadmap with BEA
Oracle executives pledge to upgrade and maintain BEA products with no forced migration, but plan to merge the two companies' ESBs technologies into a single product.
Read more about BEA and Oracle
Oracle details SOA, Java roadmap with BEA
Oracle executives pledge to upgrade and maintain BEA products with no forced migration, but plan to merge the two companies' ESBs technologies into a single product.
BEA users draw up their own roadmap for Oracle
BEA users respond to SearchSOA.com's survey and give their perspectives on Oracle's plans for the products they rely on.
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