Gentleware AG announced that it had joined the Eclipse Foundation and is releasing a new product line called "Apollo for Eclipse"[TM]. Apollo for Eclipse is the first commercial UML 2.1 modeling tool that is based on open source technology developed by the Eclipse Graphical Modeling Framework (GMF) project. The new visual modeling tool is tightly integrated with the Eclipse development environment (IDE), and is primarily aimed at agile developers who want to flexibly combine the advantages of visual modeling using UML (Unified Modeling Language) with programming in Java.

"Apollo for Eclipse is the power modeling tool that agile developers have been seeking," said Dr. Marko Boger, CEO and Founder of Gentleware. "The first release of Apollo for Eclipse focuses on high-speed, high-reliability roundtripping between Java and UML class diagrams, which is the core capability required by agile developers. We will incrementally expand Apollo for Eclipse's capabilities in future releases to incorporate the latest improvements from Eclipse modeling projects and to add new features needed by agile developers."

Gentleware AG is already an established leader in successfully commercializing open source modeling tools. Its "Poseidon for UML" product has become one of the most popular UML modeling tools worldwide with over 1.5 million downloads. With Apollo for Eclipse, Gentleware reaffirms its leadership role and becomes the first commercial vendor to integrate the modeling projects of the Eclipse Callisto release into a professional product. The integration of the UML 2 and EMF projects guarantees a standards-compliant implementation, while the use of GMF provides an excellent user interface, architectural flexibility, and model scalability.

Cris Kobryn, a Gentleware board member, who also chaired the UML 1.1, UML 2.0 and SysML standardization teams, explained the strategic importance of the new product line: "As model-driven development technologies have become mainstream, several trends have become prominent," he said. "These trends include agile modeling, domain-specific modeling, and open source development. Gentleware's new Apollo for Eclipse product line embraces all three of these trends. First, it supports agile modeling since it uses a pragmatic subset of UML 2.1 that supports effective Java roundtripping. Second, it facilitates domain-specific modeling because it is designed to be customized and extended for specific domains using the UML 2.1 profile mechanism and the Eclipse framework. Lastly, it supports open source development since the new product is based on Eclipse GMF, the best open source modeling technology currently available."

Apollo for Eclipse's support for roundtrip engineering is fully synchronized and employs the latest releases of UML 2.1 and Java 5 to provide an instant visualization of any existing Java code through UML class diagrams, and likewise propagate changes to the UML model throughout the code. The tool fully integrates into the Eclipse environment, which makes it easy for developers to view code as models, and vice versa. In addition, Apollo for Eclipse includes many improvements to improve tool usability and scalability, which reduces the developer learning curve while maximizing the developer productivity curve.