Tech Watch | InfoWorld Staff » Rational to tout Eclipse at user conference

August 22, 2003 | Comments: (0)

Rational to tout Eclipse at user conference

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Rational at the Rational User Conference 2003 in Orlando next week won't unveil new products, but does plan to fill attendees in on strategic initiatives including participation in the Eclipse open source tools framework, said Eric Schurr, vice president of marketing for Rational products in the IBM software group in Lexington, Ky.

Rational plans to migrate all of its products to the Eclipse open source tools framework, Schurr said. Eclipse accelerates Rational's ability to provide an integrated software development platform, according to Schurr.

"What it means for customers in the end is a better, higher performing software development platform," he said.

While Rational tools will not be free as part of Eclipse, Rational is adding more advanced features of an IDE to Eclipse, including visual modeling, model-driven development, quality by design and enterprise change management, Schurr said.

Acquired by IBM six months ago. Rational also plans to provide details on several other efforts:

* Emphasizing its plans to continue supporting the Microsoft .Net platform.

* Submission of the Reusable Asset Specification, for making software reusable, to the Object Management Group. Rational will submit the specification with a couple of other vendors. "Having this become a standard will improve the overall industry ability to reuse assets," Schurr said.

* Model-driven development plans, including integrating IBM WebSphere Studio with Rational's visual modeling technology.

* Touting the company's best practices plan, featuring practices and guidelines on how to best plan and run software. "What we're talking to customers about is continued commitment to forwarding those best practices to make them more configurable so they can be customized to the needs of a project or an organiza-tion," Schurr said.

* Focusing on the company's quality by design initiative, to help organizations improve the quality of software they deliver. "What we're doing here is we're moving the attention to quality earlier in the lifecycle in the design stage," said Schurr.

* A focus on enterprise change management that is intended to help teams of developers work together on software configuration, requirements, change and project management.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 22, 2003 11:49 AM

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