Oracle today announced it will extend its participation in the Eclipse Foundation by becoming a Board Member and Strategic Developer. An Eclipse member since its inception, Oracle's increased role further demonstrates the company's efforts to help drive open source innovations and furthers its commitment to the developer community. Oracle's increased role in the Eclipse community also includes a new proposal to open source its Oracle(R) TopLink technology, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, through the Eclipse Foundation.

Innoopract, Founding Memberof the Eclipse Foundation and leading provider of services and products inthe Eclipse environment, announced today that it has become a StrategicDeveloper Member of the Foundation. Following Nokia and Iona, Innoopract isthe third European company to become Strategic Developer. The Germancompany is an elected Eclipse Board member, one of the founding members ofthe Eclipse Foundation and is a leading supplier of Eclipse distributionand software-as-a-service technology. As Strategic Developer, Innoopractwill continue to hold a seat on the Board of Directors and participate inthe Architecture, Requirements, and Planning Councils of the EclipseFoundation.

Teamprise, provider of the popular suite of applications for accessing Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server from within Eclipse and on UNIX-based platforms, today announced that it has joined the Eclipse Foundation as an Add-In Provider.

The significance of blogging is not the word 'blog' whether used as a verb or a noun, but its role as a harbinger of the game-changing Web-as-platform revolution. In particular, the migration of blogging from the individual toward the enterprise...

Modern development environments bring multiple integrated tools to developers' fingertips. Integration of editors and compilers for multiple languages, database browsers, framework-specific development tools, and more are commonplace and considered by many to be entry-level features: the minimum support required to be taken seriously. But modern development environments miss out when it comes to integrating the most important part: the developer.

WHAT: Instantiations, Inc., a leading provider of software quality and productivity solutions, will unveil its newest tools for Eclipse-based development environments at EclipseCon 2007. In addition, the company's best-selling technical authors, Eric Clayberg, senior vice president product development, and Dan Rubel, CTO, will provide a tutorial based on their book, 'Eclipse: Building Commercial-Quality Plug-Ins.' Rubel and Phil Quitslund, senior architect, have collected a group of experts for a moderated round-table discussion on the myths and realities of UI testing. Clayberg will participate in a panel discussing how Eclipse must adapt to become the IDE for Ajax. WHERE: EclipseCon 2007 Santa Clara Convention Center Booth #100 WHEN: March 5-8, 2007

Innoopract and Instantiations, Inc., long-timecontributors to the Eclipse open source community, today announced theirrespective donation of managed distribution expertise and technology to theEclipse Foundation's new Eclipse Packaging Project (EPP). The goals of EPPhttp://www.eclipse. org/proposals/packaging/ are to offer domain orlanguage-specific Eclipse solutions and to improve the download andinstallation process for users of all platforms supported by Eclipseprojects. As leading contributors to the project, the companies willco-lead the project and allocate technical staff for the management andongoing development.

The Eclipse platform is an open source, integrated system of application development tools that you implement and extend using a plug-in interface. The Eclipse Business Intelligence Reporting Tool (BIRT) is a set of plug-in extensions that enable a developer to add reporting functionality to an application. BIRT provides a Report Engine API that a developer can use to create a customized report generator application. The org.eclipse.birt.repo rt.engine.api package contains a set of interfaces and implementation classes that supports integrating the runtime part of BIRT into an application.

Sun Microsystems Inc. , a leader in helping customers virtualize their computing environments for over 20 years, today outlined its three-pronged approach to virtualization: harnessing commodity technologies, delivering Sun's own advanced products and technologies, and leveraging Sun's global expertise in providing systems and software. Sun will continue to help customers use virtualization to cost-effectively gain better synergy and productivity out of their computing infrastructure.

SpikeSource, a provider of open source solutions, today announced an agreement with Hyperic Inc, the leader in multi-platform, open source systems management, to certify and resell the industry's leading open source systems management platform, Hyperic HQ(TM). Under terms of the agreement, SpikeSource will offer Hyperic HQ as part of its family of business-ready open source solutions.

Capping fourteen consecutive quarters of profitability, Tidal Software, a leading provider of integrated application scheduling and performance management software, today announced its results for the second quarter of fiscal 2007, ending December 31, 2006. Total revenue was up 35% compared to the fiscal second quarter of the previousyear. For the first half of the fiscal year, new license revenue was up45% compared to the previous year, demonstrating the continued strength indemand for the integrated application scheduling and performance management suite of products.

The Eclipse Foundation has announced the release of the Eclipse Data Tools Platform (DTP) 1.0, a collection of extensible frameworks and exemplary tools for developing data-centric applications in the Eclipse environment.

Adobe's Eclipse-based Flex Builder 2 last month shipped in a version for Macintosh Platform. 'The response to Flex Builder from the Mac developer community has been overwhelming and positive,' said Jeff Whatcott, vice president marketing and business development for Adobe's Enterprise and Developer Business Unit. 'More and more,' Whatcott continued, 'the Web is about experiences. With Flex Builder for the Mac more exciting and more engaging experiences will be in reach for greater numbers of people, regardless of their development platform.'

Involved in the Eclipse open source software movement since 1999, privately-held Instantiations grew its company revenue over 70 percent during 2006. During the same time, the company also increased its staff by 40 percent. The company achieved its 2006 growth by focusing on adding high-value, high ROI software development functionality targeted at its primary market, professional software developers in organizations and enterprises that build their own software systems.

Nexaweb's Enterprise Web 2.0 solutions enable businesses to deploy Richer, Thinner, Faster applications over the Web. Specifically, applications built with Nexaweb deliver the high performance and robust functionality of client/server software with the universal reach, no-install deployment and centralized management of browser-based applications. With Nexaweb, developers can build enterprise-strength RIA solutions using Ajax and Java that access legacy, Web services, and SOA technologies in a unified declarative XML development environment. And only Nexaweb?s comprehensive Enterprise Web 2.0 solutions are backed by an established methodology and reference architecture proven by more than 5,000 successful global deployments. To learn more about Nexaweb?s Enterprise Web 2.0 solutions visit: http://www.nexaweb.com.

Even though I write for SYS-CON, I've never publicly complimented them. But this time they really deserve a credit. SYS-CON will present the AJAXWorld 2007 Conference & Expo 2007 East in March. Usually, attendees have very limited access to speakers during conferences, and SYS-CON Events came out with a simple but smart idea - yesterday they have created an Ask The Faculty Forum, where anyone can post questions to the conference speakers and faculty. And you do not even have to attend the conference to participate in this forum. It's a very nice idea, or rather 'Idea 2.0' Speakers should visit the forum and answer the questions to promote their sessions, and software developers will have a chance to correspond with well known people in the industry. Yours truly will run Adobe Flex Hands-on Workshop during this event, so feel free to post relevant questions - it does not matter if you are planning to be there or not. I'm sure, other event organizers will start copycatting SYS-CON, which is a win-win situation for everyone.

In a comparison of leading commercial AJAX solutions, the InfoWorld Test Center gave the highest rating to the Backbase Enterprise AJAX Framework. 'It's great to see independent authorities to confirm the quality and added-value of the Backbase software,' said Jouk Pleiter, CEO of Backbase

Understanding the complexity of AJAX at the browser level is critical to refining and debugging rich AJAX applications that leverage Web technologies such as JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and XMLHttpRequests. Adding a third-party AJAX runtime heightens the complexity and sufficient browser tooling becomes critical when attempting to build a rich Internet application around existing libraries. The Eclipse AJAX Toolkit Framework (ATF) provides both a multi-faceted set of browser tooling features as well as support for integrating and building on existing AJAX runtimes.

Aptana, founded by Paul Colton announced the that the update to Milestone 7 includes a number of debugger enhancements, is now available. Aptana comes prepackaged with popular AJAX/JavaScript libraries.

OpenLogic has upped the number of open source projects pre-certified by its flagship OpenLogic Enterprise widgetry from 160 to a round 200 and new versions of about 100 packages it already supported like Eclipse and JBoss have been added.

It looks like Borland could not find a buyer for their IDE division, and they've released a new Eclipse-based version of Java IDE - JBuilder 2007. They will TRY TO SELL different version of this product, and the Enterprise Edition costs $1999 (?!). They must be crazy. For only two grand it offers 'velocity with Visual EJB and web services GUIs, provides balance, enabling management of complex projects across locations with P2P and TeamInsight, and gives organizations confidence to develop with open source tools and plug-ins'. This is not even funny.

Alfresco Software, Inc., the first and leadingprovider of an open source enterprise content management solution, has beennamed among the 100 leaders in the digital content industry by EContentMagazine for the second straight year. Judges of the EContent 100recognized Alfresco for its continued leadership in thought, technology andinnovation in content management including intranets and portals. The awardis shared with notable companies such as Google, EMC, DIGG and Microsoft.Alfresco has been named to the list for each of its first two years inexistence.

Steema Software has announced the release of teeChart v.1 for Java. The product supports major Java programming environments (IDEs) including Borland JBuilder, IBM Eclipse, Sun NetBeans, IntelliJ IDEA and Oracle JDeveloper. New visual features include transparency, 3-color gradients and gray-scale functionalities.

CodeGear announced JBuilder 2007, an enterprise-class integrated development environment (IDE) built on Eclipse to make collaborative development fast and reliable for Java, open source and the web. CodeGear JBuilder 2007 accelerates developer velocity with Visual EJB and web services GUIs, provides balance between the worlds of open source and commercial software with TeamInsight, an integrated collaboration portal, and increases developer confidence, through better control over open source plug-ins.

An Eclipse plug-in was unveiled yesterday at SYS-CON Events' 10th SOA Web Services Edge 2006 Conference & Expo to provide visibility and knowledge into the entire application infrastructure - for analyzing application logic across technologies.

SYS-CON.TV invites you to join an industry all-star lineup today at 1:30PM EST - Enerjy CEO, Nigel Cheshire; renowned IT guru, Andrew Binstock; and Java Developer's Journal publisher, Jeremy Geelan - as they shine the spotlight on the increased quality and reliability your applications will enjoy by using quality metrics at the developer level to build your software development process!

The Eclipse Foundation, an open source community committed to the implementation of a universal software development platform, announced three milestone releases within the Eclipse Device Software Development Platform (DSDP). 'The DSDP project is crucial to fulfilling Eclipse's goal of creating a universal development platform for increasingly complex software,' said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. ?DSDP has gained rapid momentum, and with these three major releases, the project now provides a broad foundation for commercial device software.?

This past Tuesday marked the fifth anniversary of the release of Eclipse 1.0. Eclipse is currently credited with saving the bacon of Java-on-the-client.

Recently I had a chance to chat with Maher Masri, the CEO of Genuitec, the company that offers the Eclipse-based Java IDE called MyEclipse. My goal was to find out why would I want to purchase this IDE if free Eclipse fits the bill for most of the developers.

Helmi Technologies, Inc., provider of the Open Source RIA Platform, today announced it has joined forces with the Eclipse Foundation, an open source development community, as an Add- In Provider.

Gentleware AG, a leader in innovative visual modeling tools, announced that it had joined the Eclipse Foundation and is releasing a new product line called 'Apollo for Eclipse'. 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 Eclipse platform is an Open Source, integrated system of application development tools that you implement and extend using a plug-in interface. Eclipse provides a set of core plug-ins that configures the basic services for the platform's framework. A platform developer can build and integrate new tools in this application development system.

On June 26, 2006 the Eclipse Foundation announced the availability of new releases of 10 Open Source projects. This simultaneous release event, named Callisto, garnered a lot of attention for the 10 projects involved. But, meanwhile, on the same day and without much fanfare, not even a press release, the Dali JPA Tools project shipped its first formal release numbered 0.5. With the release of Dali 0.5, developers now have a solid set of tools for developing applications for the new Java Persistence API (JPA) in Eclipse.

Gentleware AG announced that it had joined the Eclipse Foundation and is releasing a new product line called 'Apollo for Eclipse'. 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 gurus at Gnu point out that the 'free' in 'free software' is used in the sense of 'free use' rather than 'free beer'. Turns out that they need to expand this meaning to include actual 'free beer' at selected points in the lifecycle of many Open Source products. One such event is rapidly approaching for our beloved Eclipse.

A presentation of development approaches and strategies for using GWT, Java and Eclipse tooling to develop rich Internet applications for AJAX. Speakers include Eclipse Foundation Board Member and Instantiations CEO, Mike Taylor along with Eric Clayberg, senior vice president of product development for Instantiation and beta-tester and author Ed Burnette. The one hour Webinar explains how to develop AJAX applications in Java using GWT Designer and the Google Web Toolkit. Clayberg will demonstrate Instantiations GWT Designer publicly for the first time and explain its use in designing and testing user interfaces for AJAX.

Palamida, a provider of software intellectual property (IP) management products, announced the Eclipse Foundation?s purchase of Palamida IP Amplifier. Eclipse uses IP Amplifier to review software submitted by project members as part of the Eclipse development process and to validate its compliance with the software licensing requirements of the Eclipse Foundation.

SYS-CON Events (www.events.sys-con.com) announced today that the first international 'AJAXWorld(TM) Conference & Expo' (www.ajaxworldexpo.com), taking place on October 3-4, 2006, at theSanta Clara Convention Center, California, will offer AJAXWorld University - Developer Bootcamp program. The AJAX Developer Bootcamp will take placeon Monday, October 2, 2006, one day before the conference opens.

Wayne Beaton from the Eclipse Foundation and Jeff McAffer, one of the architects of the Eclipse Platform, broadcast web-wide on SYS-CON.TV on Tuesday, and delivered a first-rate webinar on 'Building Rich Clients Using Eclipse RCP.' Clearly the Eclipse Rich Client Platform is a hot topic right now, and the questions flooded in via the SYS-CON.TV webinar interface.

On June 26, 2006 the Eclipse Foundation announced the availability of new releases of 10 Open Source projects. This simultaneous release event, named Callisto, garnered a lot of attention for the 10 projects involved. But, meanwhile, on the same day and without much fanfare, not even a press release, the Dali JPA Tools project shipped its first formal release numbered 0.5. With the release of Dali 0.5, developers now have a solid set of tools for developing applications for the new Java Persistence API (JPA) in Eclipse.