StreamBase on Monday is unveiling this capability with the StreamBase Developer Edition. The package features the StreamBase Studio developer tool and a non-production version of the StreamBase stream processing engine. Developers can plug the tool into the Eclipse IDE.

Developer Edition is available free over the Web. StreamBase Studio previously was based on Eclipse.

"What we're finding is you want a Web distribution of your software. [We] want to make it very easy for developers to try out the system," said Michael Stonebraker, founder and CTO of StreamBase.

Developers can use the tool to build applications, but once an application is deployed into production, users must purchase a StreamBase license, which starts in price at US$95,000. StreamBase's engine is being used in applications ranging from click stream monitoring in e-business systems to financial services and military surveillance.

StreamBase with its application development strategy leverages the open source Eclipse plug-in framework. The company's unveiling features and plug-ins to Eclipse that make it easy for developers to connect new data feeds or custom adapters to the StreamBase engine. Input and output plug-ins enable, respectively, the stream processing system to access events and send processed data to enterprise systems.