Oracle cites Eclipse as competitor with new dev tool

10.02.2006
Oracle, with the newly shipping version of its free JDeveloper Java development tool, is looking to compete with the Eclipse open source juggernaut. The company also is shipping an upgrade to its application server, bundled with a rules engine and an ESB (enterprise service bus).

Available are the standard version of Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 and Oracle JDeveloper 10g Release 3. They are being positioned as components of the Oracle Fusion middleware platform, which is billed as the company's SOA platform.

With the new version of JDeveloper, the company is vying with the Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEs for the hearts of developers, said Ted Farrell, Oracle chief architect and vice president.

JDeveloper boasts enhanced features such as a visual page flow support and a BPEL designer, Farrell said. Oracle, which is a member of the Eclipse Foundation, hopes to leverage the free developer tool to promote its commercial offerings.

JDeveloper has an advantage over the Eclipse IDE in building of Web applications, said a user who has previewed the new release and also uses Eclipse.

"Eclipse is very good [for coding] our base application, but when you want to do Web applications, you use some kind of plug-in," said Eric Marcoux, a technical architect at Fujitsu Consulting. The plug-ins do not offer ideal integration, according to Marcoux.