IBM Rational Suite To Support Open-Source Hyades Framework

Spokespeople from IBM, Armonk, N.Y., said the news demonstrates IBM's continued support for open-source technologies as the foundation of its tools portfolio. Word of IBM Rational's plan to support Hyades in its testing and monitoring suite first surfaced in March.

Overseen by the Eclipse Foundation, which was spun off from IBM last February, Hyades offers a standard framework for data models, data collection and execution and user-interface components employed in a testing and monitoring environment, said Serge Lucio, a senior product manager at IBM Rational.

The Hyades project began two years ago and is supported by IBM, SAP, Compuware and Intel, Lucio said. SAP has committed to adopting Hyades as the foundation for some of the software-quality components of its NetWeaver integration and development software.

IBM Rational is encour-aging the tools community to support Hyades as the standard for quality assurance, testing and monitoring so that vendors' products can more easily work together, said Geoffrey Bessin, an IBM Rational market manager.

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But not everyone sees peace, love and understanding in IBM's support of open-source technologies. One solution provider thinks the effort is intended to keep Microsoft out of the equation.

"I am increasingly observing a polarization of development communities into two groups," said Richard Warren, president of Shenandoah Technologies, Winchester, Va. "The Eclipse-based open-source group seems to value community, collaboration and collegiality, while the [Microsoft] Visual Studio-based group seems to most value speed, ease of use and convenience. Both IBM and Microsoft are adding functionality at the margins that will speak to the other group's interests.

Future versions of IBM Rational's software-quality, testing and monitoring tools suite"which includes Rational Robot, Rational Functional Tester and Rational Test Realtime"are being re-engineered on Hyades. Bessin said the next major update of the tools will support Hyades, but he did not say when they would be released.

BARBARA DARROW contributed to this story.