Sun Unveils Next Rev Of Java IDE, Integrated Development Platform

Sun Microsystems

The announcements come as Sun gears up for a major Sun ONE software launch--including a new version of its Sun ONE Application Server and an integrated software platform--on June 19 in San Francisco.

Called Sun ONE Studio 4, the new version of the Java IDE is available now and comes in three configurations: an enterprise version, a community version and a mobile applications version, said Drew Engstrom, product line manager for Sun ONE Studio tools. Sun ONE Studio, formerly Forte for Java, is built on the open-source NetBeans framework, he said.

Sun ONE Studio 4, Enterprise Edition features full J2EE 1.3 support to build Enterprise JavaBeans (EJBs) and deploy them to app servers supporting J2EE, including Sun ONE, Oracle9i, BEA WebLogic and the free Java reference implementation, said Engstrom. The product, which costs $1,995 per seat, also supports Java for XML APIs for XML messaging, parsing and registries. Developers already using competing Java IDEs--Borland's JBuilder, Oracle's JDeveloper, WebGain's VisualCafe and IBM's VisualAge For Java or WebSphere Application Developer--can upgrade to Sun ONE Studio 4, Enterprise Edition, for $995 per seat, Engstrom said, adding that Microsoft Visual Studio.Net developers also can take advantage of the upgrade.

Sun ONE Studio 4, Community Edition and Sun ONE Studio 4, Mobile Edition are available free, according to Engstrom. The community edition is an all-purpose IDE for basic Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE) development as well as the development of JSPs and Java servlets for Web applications. The mobile edition is targeted at developers of Java applications for mobile devices using Java 2 Mobile Edition (J2ME).

The integrated development offering, Sun ONE Developer Platform, will be rolled out as part of the Sun ONE software announcement next week, according to company executives. Built atop Sun ONE Studio 4, Enterprise Edition, the Sun ONE Developer Platform is an integrated development and testing environment that developers can use to build different facets of an enterprise application on Sun software products, said Sanjay Sarathy, director of product marketing for developer enablement at Sun.

"Different developer types are responsible for different types of an application," said Sarathy. "The product consists of a number of new tools designed for different developer roles."

New plug-in tools that run atop Sun ONE Studio include Sun ONE Connector Builder, for building Java connector architecture (JCA)-based adapters to back-end applications; Sun ONE Application Framework, for rapid application development (RAD), a tool aimed at VisualBasic developers; and Sun ONE Portlet Builder, a component of Sun ONE Portal Server 6.0, released several weeks ago, Sarathy said. The Sun ONE Developer Platform also includes development and test versions of a new product, the Sun ONE Registry Server, a private UDDI registry based on Sun's LDAP implementation, as well as the latest versions of the Sun ONE Portal Server, the Sun ONE Application Server and the Sun ONE Identity Server.

The Sun ONE Development Platform will priced at $5,000 per developer seat and be available in the fourth quarter, with early access sometime in late summer, said Sarathy.

In related news, IBM--one of Sun's chief Java software rivals--on Monday said it will standardize developer tools for its integration middleware, WebSphere software and IBM eServer iSeries products on its WebSphere Studio IDE, which is built on the Eclipse open-source platform.