JBuilder

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JBuilder

JBuilder 2005 Screenshot
Developer: Borland
Latest release: 2007 / November 20, 2006
OS: Cross-platform
Use: Java SDK
Website: www.borland.com/jbuilder

JBuilder is a Java IDE from Borland. It has won several consecutive awards as the most powerful IDE for professional Java Programming.

Borland sells a variety of versions of JBuilder, and offers a free limited version for beginners of the Java language.

JBuilder's main competitors are the products from IBM (Eclipse), JetBrains (IntelliJ IDEA), BEA Systems and Sun Microsystems (NetBeans).

[edit] History

JBuilder was conceived within Borland in late 1995, by the people fascinated with the new language Java including David Williams, Carl Quinn and Jayson Minard working in Borland's Component Product Group and the C++ Group. Carl Quinn later created the Baja component model which became the basis of the JavaBeans specification. Jayson Minard created the Java prototype which was the foundation for the JBuilder IDE, and the DataSet model for database access. Other people later joining the team were Joe Nuxoll and Blake Stone who led the development of the first all-Java version of the product, and with Blake Stone eventually become JBuilder's chief scientist after Jayson Minard vacated the role.

The first version of JBuilder was mostly written in Delphi other than the form designer and component library. Version 3.5 was the first written fully in Java, and this platform, revolutionary for those days, 1997, permitted users to add "add-ons", a.k.a. OpenTools, and so customize the IDE for their purposes. As a result, Oracle was able to build their initial JDeveloper based on JBuilder (in 2001 JDeveloper was rewritten, today it does not contain any code from the JBuilder product). A community formed around the new product, adding more and more new plugins. One of such plugins, the Together plugin for JBuilder finally evolved into a separate, standalone product - but the company, TogetherSoft, was eventually acquired by Borland.

JBuilder 3 had a reputation for being slow and unstable. By version 3.5 Tony de la Lama took control over the production process - and since then, until his departure in 2003 to take control of the TogetherSoft acquisition, Borland produced a version of JBuilder every 6 months, with quality ever improving and features being added. Tony de la Lama declared war on competing products, in his campaign, targeting VisualCafe, then WebGain. Borland won these wars with JBuilder.

One of the lines of intensive development was J2EE. JBuilder is now able to work with multiple application servers, and can be used for developing web services and JSPs. Another line, where developers initiative did not always find understanding in the management, is Extreme Programming. Another feature is integration with Borland's profiler, Optimizeit.

In 2004, Blake Stone left Borland and joined Microsoft[1] to become the architect for the Microsoft Visual Studio Core Team [2]. Tony de la Lama left Borland and joined BEA Systems as vice president on January 2005[3].

Lately, Eclipse, an open source platform/IDE that is modular and highly extensible, has been taking over. Borland was one of the founding members of the Eclipse Foundation. In February of 2005, Borland significantly increased its support of the Eclipse platform and joined its board of directors as a strategic developer [4].

In the second half of 2006, Borland will move to Eclipse as the underlying integration platform for JBuilder. Similar to IBM's Rational Software Architect built on top of Eclipse with a lot (14 CDs) of IBM content, Borland will add value at a higher level (creating Eclipse plug-in modules for modeling, visualization, team collaboration, etc) in its JBuilder. Until then, the latest available JBuilder version is 2007, released in November 2006.

[edit] External links

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