Today, vendors of tools suites, like IBM, Microsoft, Serena, Compuware and Borland, provide at most partial integration that occasionally use common meta data, but more often than not rely on file transfers.

Against a backdrop of missed goals, Serena has just secured approval from the Eclipse Foundation to lead an open source project that will initially conceive a framework of web services representing processes in the software development life cycle that are driven from a federated meta data model.

The project, called the Application Lifecycle Framework (ALF), complements the core Eclipse framework that provides a common front-end shell or user interface into which best-of-breed tools can plug in. Ideally, ALF will provide a framework for back end, meta data integration of what actually happens during the software development process.

ALF’s goal will be specifying definitions of common processes so they can be exposed as services. In so doing, the project will leverage web services standards such as BPEL to orchestrate the services required to perform functions such as providing an approval cycle for requirements definition or acceptance of software testing results.

Ultimately, the goal is meta data and tool interoperability via a federated approach where no single vendor controls all the definitions.

ALF will leverage other open source technologies such as the Eclipse Business Intelligence Reporting Tools (BIRT) project to report on software development processes; and the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF), which provides a meta data framework and facility for generating code from the meta models.

To date, the list of organizations backing the ALF effort is small, primarily consisting of second tier specialists much smaller than Serena. Backers include BuildForge, which automates and manages software builds; Catalyst Development Corp, which provides internet components and libraries for Windows; Secure Software Inc, which provides tools for detecting security leaks and bugs; and Segue Software Inc, a maker of web software testing tools. Additionally, UBS has contributed engineering resources to the project.

At first glance, the new project appears to be the Eclipse community’s answer to Microsoft’s Visual Studio Team System initiative, in that both are aimed at integrating the software development life cycle.

However, Microsoft’s effort is release of an off-the-shelf product, currently scheduled for Q4 of this year, which will be part of Visual Studio 2005. It will offer a repository, bundled with some rudimentary toolsets, backed by a rudimentary set of meta data definitions which third party tools vendors will enhance. On the .NET side of its product line, Serena is developing tools that will plug into Microsoft’s VS Team System.

By contrast, the Eclipse ALF effort will be far more modest in scope in that it is seeking to build standards, not product, and will be incremental. We’re taking a more federated, collaborative approach, said Kevin Parker, vice president of marketing for Serena, and informal evangelist for the project. We’ve seen the failures in the past like AD/Cycle, and think it’s more important to start small and grow from there.

The project, to be headed by Ali Kheirolomoom, vice president of architecture at Serena, will aim for developing a prototype by year end, with the goal of having a first version framework ready by Fall 2006.