According to our judges, IBM's WebSphere Studio Enterprise Developer V5.1.1 "[is] the one to beat." But at $5,500 per seat, the high price cost this products points. It gets the Silver Award.

WebSphere Studio Enterprise Developer is an application development environment for building and maintaining J2EE and Web services applications.

With WebSphere Studio Enterprise Developer, a user can optimize and simplify application development to SOAs with best practices, visual tools, templates, code generation and a comprehensive development environment. It allows developers to share a common view of applications and resources, helping management and communication.

It includes an XML tool set to help build document type definitions (DTDs), XML schemas and files and integrate relational data with Web services. It also provides wizards and tools to help develop Web services in distributed environments.

Support includes educational services, warranty and a software maintenance plan.

Catherine Ketcher