The Eclipse Foundation is expected to approve the SOA proposal as an Eclipse project in 30 to 60 days, said Mike Milinkovich, Eclipse executive director.

"It's never a completely done deal that it will be accepted. We have to respect the Eclipse process, but everything I've seen to date indicates that it's going to be successful," he said.

"This really helps extend Eclipse tools offerings into new and interesting areas," he added. "This is going to be rounding out the building blocks at Eclipse, and we are hoping that we'll attract other tools vendors in the industry to this platform so that we can show a consolidation of the tools offering for SOA around this Eclipse project."

As with other Eclipse technology efforts, Eclipse will provide an open source, base-level platform upon which commercial vendors will innovate, according to Milinkovich.

"We believe that there's always going to be lots of room for commercial tools," he said.