ARC Development Tools: Keeping the Focus On Integration

Last year's Java tools category in the Annual Report Card survey has migrated to the

enterprise development tools category. However, Java, or, more precisely, Enterprise Java Beans (EJB), is still the key to successful application development, according to many developers.

EJB lets developers write components once and deploy them in any server environment. Increasingly, that need is a Web-application server running an e-commerce application, tied to a back-end enterprise server. Writing code only once and reusing it in different environments saves an enormous amount of time,a necessity on the Web. Tool vendors are also including more wizards in their products, further reducing development time.

Not surprisingly, most vendors in the tools category have integrated their enterprise-tool offerings with their Web-application servers. "You can't be successful without making it easy for customers and partners to develop applications," says Valerie Olague, director of marketing for WebSphere at IBM. And most application development is targeted to the Web. Similarly, Oracle's JDeveloper product is integrated with its Internet Application Server, and Sybase's PowerJ integrates with its Enterprise Application Server.

"Software is becoming a service in hosted applications. Tools optimized for that environment will stand out," says John Magee, a senior product marketing manager at Oracle. Magee believes integration is going to become more important. "The era of standalone tools is coming to a close," he says.

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