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IBM Corp has launched WebSphere Studio Site Developer, a new tool aimed at pulling together everything a developer needs to create, manage and maintain e-business web sites. Wizards and templates are provided to make programming with Java, XML and web services as simple and uncomplicated as possible. The product also offers image editing and animation facilities.

WebSphere Studio Application Developer, the standard integrated development environment (IDE) for use with IBM's WebSphere application server and its many layered products, is now available on Linux as well as Windows. Its integrated unit test environment currently works with Red Hat and SuSE Linux, the two most popular distributions with corporate developers. The Windows version now supports Windows XP, in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Korean and Chinese.

The new products are based on the Eclipse platform, which is backed by the open source community of the same name. Eclipse is rapidly gaining a reputation as a sophisticated kit of parts from which skilled developers can quickly produce reliable working software. IBM has announced that 25 companies will deliver tools based on Eclipse by mid-year, while more than 50 independent projects are known to be using Eclipse.

"Eclipse offers developers a portal-like approach to integration that unleashes greater productivity by simplifying the development process," said Scott Hebner, IBM's WebSphere marketing director. "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."

One of the strengths of WebSphere Studio Application Developer is that programmers can work with Java classes, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs), and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) or eXtensible Markup Language (XML) side by side in a common window. IBM claims that this is much more convenient and productive than having to move back and forth between different windows. A web services client wizard generates proxies capable of consuming the document-style Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) messages used by Microsoft .Net web services.

IBM recently announced WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition for Windows, which allows Java developers to compose web services and build adaptors to legacy applications, as well as WebSphere Studio Device Developer, which extends e-business applications to cell phones, personal digital assistants and other handheld devices using Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME).

Two new plug-ins for WebSphere Studio are planned for May release. Everyplace Toolkit enables web developers to create wireless applications and portlets with HTML, Wireless Markup Language (WML) and Compact HTML (CHTML). Portal Toolkit is designed for creating, testing and debugging web applications as portlets. IBM has also released a new version of WebSphere Voice Toolkit that debugs applications by detecting where VoiceXML code needs to be modified to match the required application flow.

WebSphere Studio Application Developer for Linux and Windows is priced at $3,500 per seat, WebSphere Studio Site Developer Advanced for Windows at $2,000 per seat, and WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition for Windows at $6,000 per seat. WebSphere Studio Device Developer costs $500 per seat, while the WebSphere Voice Toolkit is free of charge. The Everyplace and Portal Toolkits will be available in May with WebSphere Everyplace Toolkit and WebSphere Portal Toolkit respectively.

Source : CBR