Sun announced earlier in the week that it is open sourcing (via netbeans.org) some significant enterprise-level tools. These include:
* 2-way UML modeler for architecting and reverse engineering complex enterprise applications. UML tools generate diagrams and keep them in sync with source changes without adding markers to the source code. Full support for the current version of the UML specification is provided.
* A set of XML infrastructure and visual editing tools which help enable developers to manage complexity in their XML files. These tools are intended to provide a base that can be extended by third parties.
* Orchestration and SOA tools are included for building composite applications. These leading-edge SOA tools leverage the business integration technology and expertise from Sun’s acquisition of SeeBeyond.
I am quite happy to see that there might finally be a decent open source two-way UML tool available. Last time I looked at this space, there was not much on offer and what was there was pretty sketchy.
Hey, I know that Sun’s tools aren’t as “cool” to use as Eclipse but there is no reason why the Eclipse community can’t swallow hard and look at how to incorporate these new tools into their IDE.
technorati tags: sun, netbeans, ide, uml, development