Genuitec Readies MyEclipse Upgrade with New Java Profiler and Modular Support
Eclipse IDE vendor Genuitec last week issued a first milestone release of its MyEclipse suite that adds a new Java profiler, support for Struts 2 and can run as a plug-in within other Eclipse-based tools.
Genuitec, whose MyEclipse is viewed as an alternative to IBM's Rational Application Developer, said its new release is built atop of the latest Eclipse 3.5 Galileo train. Slated for release in October, MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench 8.0 is the first from Genuitec that can be used as a plug-in to other Eclipse-based IDEs. In addition to the Java profiler, the company's Visual SQL database tools, Matisse4MyEclipse Swing UI Designer and UML tools will be available outside the core MyEclipse environment as plug-ins.
The decision to offer the features as plug-ins was the result of customer demand, said Todd Williams, Genuitec's vice president of technology. Other features will be added over time, he said in an interview. "This is the first time we've done this, so we are hitting the high value ones that people have asked for and we are going to see where it goes from there," Williams said.
"It's definitely going to broaden our reach, we are going to start off by making these tools available independently, and we will see in what configurations they are used in, and we will probably come up with additional packaging of MyEclipse targeted at very different markets than enterprise Java."
Specifically he sees having targeted releases for database developers and those who use UML for modeling, among others. Those using the new MyEclise release can also determine which features of the tool they want to use and discard the rest. The feature, called MyEclise Lite, is aimed at removing the bloat of the core tool.
"It is a good effort at realizing the true vision of Eclipse as a modular IDE which can also be lightweight," said IDC analyst Al Hilwa in an email. "Sometimes the generality of being modular means that you have to install a hundred things to get the functionality you need. With MyEclipse a more constrained, but light-weight and intuitive approach is [now] offered."
Genuitec's Williams said the new Java profiler will allow developers to choose resources. "There aren’t a lot of Java profilers in the Eclipse space and ours runs the gamut on what it can profile," he said. "It can do J2EE development, where it's important to be able to profile application servers and your code running within an application server. It will do plain Java applications and applets." And with its new modular support, developers can now use the Java profiler as plug-ins within other Eclipse tools, he added.
The Struts 2 support for creating Java-based Web applications in the new release was the most requested feature in the new release, the company said. The new release also supports Jetty 7, a lightweight Java-based HTTP server.
The pricing remains the same as prior versions: $30 for a standard edition, $60 for a professional edition and $120 for IBM WebSphere developers.
About the Author
Jeffrey Schwartz is editor of Redmond magazine and also covers cloud computing for Virtualization Review's Cloud Report. In addition, he writes the Channeling the Cloud column for Redmond Channel Partner. Follow him on Twitter @JeffreySchwartz.