The AJAX Tooling Framework (ATF) project passed its creation review and is now being incubated inside the BEA-lead Web Tools Platform (WTP) project at Eclipse. ATP is a new collection of Eclipse-based technologies designed to make it easier to develop rich Internet applications based on AJAX.

The WTP project is a top-level Eclipse project that focuses on Web and J2EE application development. Dr. Tim Wagner of BEA, the WTP project lead, approved ATF’s review in conjunction with the Eclipse Foundation.

The significance of this announcement is that AJAX technologies are finding a home in an area that could lead to their standardization, according to those involved in the project. Backed by BEA, IBM and others, The Ajax tools project is the most promising effort to date that aspires to bring standardization to this highly fragmented technology.

“WTP is excited to host this technology,” said Wagner, “This complements the existing tools in WTP and will make it easier for users of the project and products built on top of it to design, build, and deploy “Web 2.0” applications”.’

Incubation is the first stage in becoming a full fledged project. Once sufficient momentum is established a project can graduate to a fully-sponsored project. “This project is an exciting advance for AJAX,” said Bill Roth, VP of the BEA Workshop product group. “While it will take some time to mature, this is an important step in getting the industry to agree on what AJAX really is.”

Information about the Eclipse WebTools project can be found at: http://www.eclipse.org/webtools/