Oracle Ties Middleware To Eclipse Workbench

Oracle has released a set of plug-ins for the Eclipse programmer's workbench that brings features of Oracle Fusion middleware to developers who use Eclipse as their integrated development environment.

The Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse lets developers already proficient with the open source workbench develop Java applications using Fusion's WebLogic application server and other middleware services, Oracle said in an announcement Wednesday. The pack supports the latest features of WebLogic 10g Release3, updated earlier this year, such as FastSwap, where a developer can make a change to a software component of a running application without shutting down either the application or application server.

Interesting Eclipse users in its middleware suite is a key Oracle goal as it seeks to capitalize on its purchase of BEA Systems, producer of WebLogic, and Oracle's surrounding middleware. The middleware battle is also a determinant of whose applications will end up dominating the enterprise, since firms that adopt Oracle middleware will be more likely to follow through and adopt compatible Oracle applications as well.

In addition to aiding connections to the Oracle database, the Oracle Enterprise Pack also supports developers working with Web services, XML, the Spring Framework for lightweight Java development, JavaServer Faces for building user interfaces using Java Enterprise Edition, Cascading Style Sheets for style consistency across Web pages, and JavaScript. The pack supports several versions of Eclipse in hopes of reaching as many Eclipse users as possible.

Ted Farrell, Oracle chief architect and senior VP, said in the announcement that the Eclipse plug-ins "help expand our offerings for... the open source developer community." In the past, Oracle has focused primarily on the users of its JDeveloper tool and writers of PL/SQL, its proprietary version of SQL data access language.

Oracle Fusion Middleware includes such products as Coherence, which caches frequently used data in memory for swift reuse across a server cluster, Oracle Content Management, and Oracle Portal.