"It looks like they're putting in some pretty interesting and useful features in there," such as the BPEL and XML tools, Willett said.

JavaServer Faces (JSF) Web development is enhanced in NetBeans 5.5 with the Visual Web Pack, a visual tool for building Web applications. Visual Web Pack features technology from the Sun Java Studio Creator development tool.

Java specifications being supported in NetBeans 5.5 include several technologies featured in Java Enterprise Edition 5. These include: JavaServer Pages 2.1, for creating dynamic Web content; JSF 1.2; Servlet 2.5, for extending a Web server and accessing business systems, and the Java Persistence architecture for persisting objects in a database. Also featured is Web tier support for Struts, Spring, and other Web frameworks.

Concurrent with NetBeans 5.5, Sun will release the NetBeans Profiler, which examines an application for issues such as performance bottlenecks, race conditions, and thread locks.

NetBeans 6.0 is eyed for release in 2007. It will boast an improved editor as well as more JavaScript and AJAX support that is based on what is in Java Studio Creator. The Creator tool has extensive support for visual design and creation of Web applications that use AJAX-enabled components. "We're going to be extending that to NetBeans," Roberts said.