Progress Software Corporation announced its membership in the Eclipse Foundation, an open source community committed to the implementation of a universal platform for the creation, integration and utilization of software tools. At the same time, Progress announced the inclusion of Eclipse-based visual development tools in Progress OpenEdge (now in beta) and current availability in the Progress Real Time Division product set. This commitment to tools independence complements Progress Software's user interface and platform independence strategies.

Eclipse provides a plug-in based framework that makes it easier to create, integrate and utilize software tools, saving time and money. By collaborating and utilizing the same framework technology, tool producers can leverage platform reuse and concentrate on core competencies to create new visual development technology. Progress Application Partners will be able to use the Eclipse-based visual development tools in OpenEdge 10.1 to more quickly and easily develop complex, componentized business applications for Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA).

"In joining the Eclipse Foundation, Progress Software continues to deliver on its long tradition of providing superior software products and services that empower our developer community to dramatically improve their productivity, simplifying the process of building, deploying and integrating modern business applications," said Gordon Van Huizen, CTO of Progress Software Corporation. "The Eclipse framework provides a rich, extensible and interoperable foundation for our new generation of visual tools. As a result, our new tools not only set the bar for rapid development of data-driven, highly scalable business applications, but natively work with hundreds of specialized third-party tools, giving developers the freedom to work with the toolset that makes sense for them."

Progress Software is one of the first commercial software infrastructure vendors to have already delivered Eclipse technology in its product set with Progress EdgeXtend, a distributed data access and caching software infrastructure offered by the Progress Real Time Division.