Borland positions modeling tool for SOA, Eclipse

04.09.2006
Borland Software this week is rolling out an upgrade to its Together enterprise modeling tool for the Eclipse platform, featuring SOA capabilities. Borland Together 2006 for Eclipse Release 2 boosts its usefulness for SOA by enabling a UML-based (Unified Modeling Language) view of dependencies in an entire system. This lets developers understand where services are being invoked and helps them gauge the impact of changes, said Dave Hauck, director of marketing for Together technologies at Borland.

Also featured is support for the Eclipse 3.2 platform and C++ projects and integration with the company's requirements definition package. Together 2006 for Eclipse Release 2 plugs into the Eclipse shell.

Eclipse 3.2 supports the Java 5 specification, which features generics, Hauck said.

With C++ backing, models and code in C++ applications are synchronized automatically when developers make changes to diagrams or code. This synchronization is based on Borland's LiveSource technology.

"Software architects and developers benefit from our LiveSource technology because we automate this source code level to UML abstraction automatically," Hauck said in an e-mail.

Design patterns and source code metrics in the new Together product help a C++ developer create better code. Integration with the Borland RDM (Requirements & Definition Management) solution, comprising Borland CalibreRM and CalibreDefineIT, allows developers, architects, and analysts to build systems based on requirements gathered during an analysis phase, Hauck said.

Borland sees itself competing with IBM Rational and Telelogic. But those vendors do not have UML modeling, data modeling, and business-process modeling integrated into a single tool, Hauck said.

BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) capabilities have been improved in the new product, enabling the import of BPEL (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services). Also further compliance with the BPMN specification and diagram improvements are included.

Model-Driven Architecture capabilities have been bolstered, as well, with the product offering enhanced transformation authoring, XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language) transformation types and examples for getting started. Model and code quality assurance functions have been improved, too.

Borland Together 2006 for Eclipse Release 2 is US$3,500 per user. It ships Sept. 8.