IBM Rational Application Developer

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IBM Rational Application Developer
Rational Application Developer with the Java code editor open
Maintainer:	IBM
Stable release:	7.0 (December, 2006) _[+/-]
Preview release:	_[+/-]
OS:	Microsoft Windows, Linux
Use:	Integrated development environment
License:	IBM EULA
Website:	www.ibm.com/software/awdtools/developer/application/

This article is about the IBM Rational IDE, formerly IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer (WSAD). For the gaming keyboard configuration, see WASD

IBM Rational Application Developer for WebSphere Software (RAD) is an integrated development environment (IDE), made by IBM's Rational Software division, for visually designing, constructing, testing, and deploying Web services, portals and Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) applications.

1 Overview
2 History
3 List of RAD-based products
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Overview

Rational Application Developer includes code and visual editors for:

It also has a built-in WebSphere Portal test environment and tight integration with other Rational tools, such as ClearCase version control and ClearQuest configuration management.

All Rational software products, including RAD and Rational Software Architect (RSA), are plugins that are built on top of a common framework, which itself consists of plugins that sit on top of the open-source Eclipse development platform. The first Rational product that you install also installs the common framework. When you install other Rational products, the existing framework is used and only product-specific plugins are installed. This technique is known as shell-sharing. Shell-sharing is enforced and cannot be deactivated.

Because RAD is Eclipse-based, it can take advantage of a vibrant market of third-party plugins for Eclipse, as well as plugins specifically for Rational tools.

[edit] History

Rational Application Developer was originally known as WebSphere Studio Application Developer (WSAD). WSAD was first released in 2001 and was positioned as the successor to both WebSphere Studio, which was originally focused on HTML development only, and VisualAge for Java. In 2005, IBM rebranded WSAD as RAD, reflecting IBM's strategy of concentrating all core developer tools into Rational, which IBM bought in 2003.