Oracle To Join Eclipse Effort, Push For API For Development Environments

Eclipse is an IBM-lead consortium formed last year that is aimed at providing a standard framework for building Integrated Development Environments, or IDEs.

Oracle is joining the Eclipse board, which already includes Borland, Hewlett-Packard, Merant, Rational Software and others. Eclipse comprises some 175 companies in all. When the Eclipse plan was unveiled last November, Oracle--and more noticeably Sun Microsystems--were not part of the effort, and Sun has been pushing its own NetBeans IDE framework.

"We want to make sure Eclipse users can be productive for our environment," said Ted Farrell, architect and director of strategy for application development tools at Oracle.

In addition, Oracle on Tuesday plans to propose a Java Specification Request (JSR) that suggests the Java Community Process (JCP) executive committee devise a standard API for extending existing IDEs. "Right now there are something like seven different IDEs, so a company like Rational [Software has to do seven different extensions to its product," Farrell said.

Oracle's move is supported by Sun, Macromedia and JetBrains, Farrell said. Should a common API become available, ISVs would be able to provide a layer atop their IDE that would map calls appropriately so that tools makers could write their products once to run across all the IDEs.

Analysts said Oracle's move makes sense.

"All vendors, including Oracle, are building application stacks. On the one hand, they tell a story of portability and interoperability. On the other hand, the stacks tend to line up, so if you buy my stuff it will work with my stuff. This [effort fills in part of the interoperability story," said Thomas Murphy, senior program director at research firm Meta Group.

There is a rift between Eclipse and Sun's NetBeans, Murphy said. "NetBeans is open source but not a standard. Eclipse is the same way. I think of Eclipse as a vehicle for IBM to innovate outside the JSR process because they've run into times when they feel it hasn't worked well for them. This gives them control over their own destiny and keeps them from running into logo issues with Sun," he said.

Sun has been known to charge vendors for the use of its logos, and IBM and other Java players have chafed at what they see as Sun's heavy-handedness on logo and other issues.

Oracle's proposed API gives both open-source offerings such as Eclipse and "closed-source" offerings such as Oracle's JDeveloper a standard API that any third party can build to, Murphy said.

Oracle said the API would be based Java standards such as the Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT) and Swing for creating GUI components, such as buttons and dialogs.

If the JCP group approves Oracle's request, it will hash out the API and publish it. But that will not necessarily be the end of the story, another analyst said. The JSR process is somewhat lengthy, and there are a couple hundred JSRs in existence. "There is an attitude inside the JCP of 'let a thousand flowers bloom.' And there is also confusion because a specification does not equal a standard," said Jason Hunter, a Java expert and publisher of Servlets.com.

Asked at Oracle World which JSRs are the most interesting to developers, Hunter quipped: "There are 200! Who has time to read them all?"