IBM announced a new customer support program, IBM Rational Elite Support for Eclipse, that will provide technical assistance to the 2.3 million users of the open source Eclipse framework worldwide. Available in the fourth quarter, users of Eclipse-based tools, including those distributed by eclipse.org or other providers, can purchase support for Eclipse, a service no other major software vendor currently provides.
IBM also announced new Eclipse Callisto-based software development tools, which it said will help customers to design, develop, and test applications. IBM Lotus Designer is a rapid application development tool that helps clients to build new components that run in WebSphere Portal 6.0, and IBM said it will release a no-charge public downloadable beta in late-September. By mid-October, IBM said it will open up IBM Rational Software Architect and IBM Rational Functional Tester version 7 for beta testing.
As well as some new tools, IBM said it has some additional resources for Eclipse developers: its developerWorks hub has a new educational tool designed to help Eclipse users learn about version 3.2 enhancements. It said the Building Cheat Sheets in Eclipse V3.2 tutorial will enable developers to view interactive tutorials from within the Eclipse Workbench and learn how to perform complex Eclipse tasks.
Borland, meanwhile, announced an upgrade to its Together 2006 for Eclipse enterprise modeling product. With new capabilities supporting architects, Java, and C++ developers, Unified Modeling Language designers, business process analysts, and data modelers, it said the release enables users across the software delivery lifecycle to build and maintain high-quality software systems as well as optimize business processes through enhanced visual design.
Together 2006 for Eclipse Release 2 is based on Eclipse 3.2, working directly within the Eclipse 3.2 shell. It supports various industry standards and languages including added support for modeling C++ applications.
Borland said the latest release is also integrated with its recently introduced Caliber DefineIT requirements definition product, enabling users to build systems from requirements by creating UML and Business Process Modeling Notation models.
