Rational Application Developer with the Java code editor open |
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| Developer(s) | IBM |
| Initial release | 6.0 [1] 7 January 2005 |
| Stable release | 8.0 [2] / 20 August 2010 |
| Written in | Java |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows, Linux |
| Available in | English International, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Brazilian, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese, Korean |
| Type | Integrated development environment |
| License | IBM EULA |
| Website | ibm.com/.. |
IBM Rational Application Developer for WebSphere Software (RAD) is a commercial Eclipse-based integrated development environment (IDE), made by IBM's Rational Software division, for visually designing, constructing, testing, and deploying Web services, portals, and Java Enterprise Edition (JEE) applications.
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Rational Application Developer is an integrated development environment that helps Java software developers design, develop, and deploy their applications. It contains specialized wizards, editors, and validators for a variety of technologies:
Rational Application Developer includes tools to improve code quality. A Java profiling tool helps to analyze an application's performance, memory usage, and threading problems. A software analysis tool identifies patterns and antipatterns in application code, and compares code to coding standards.[8]
To manage source code, a development team can configure Rational Application Developer to work with a source code repository system. The product ships with connectors to IBM Rational ClearCase for source control and IBM Rational ClearQuest for defect management. It also ships with a Rational Team Concert client that can be used for both source control and defect management.
The workbench includes tools for deploying an application to a local or remote server. It contains test environments for IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM WebSphere Portal. It also supports Apache Tomcat. Using these tools, a software developer can test their application locally before publishing it to a production server.[9] Cloud computing capability is provided for the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise[10] and the IBM Workload Deployer.[11]
Because Rational Application Developer is Eclipse-based, it can support the third-party plug-ins for Eclipse, as well as plug-ins specifically for Rational tools.
In 2001, IBM donated the Eclipse Platform into Open Source to enable community-driven development of a Java workbench and tools.[12] Eclipse was based on standards like J2EE and was designed with a plug-in based framework so that vendors could easily extend the features of the workbench.
Also in 2001, IBM replaced the VisualAge for Java and WebSphere Studio products with WebSphere Studio Application Developer (WSAD), version 4.0. WSAD extended the Eclipse platform and included tools to develop Web services and XML applications, and for performance profiling.
In 2002, IBM released version 5.0 of WSAD adding a Java Visual Editor, an XSL debugger, and test and analysis tools. Applications could be deployed to WebSphere Application Server version 5.0. New supported programming standards included J2EE 1.3.
In 2003, IBM completed the purchase of Rational Software[13] and a year later, replaced WSAD with Rational Application Developer version 6.0. This release supported WebSphere Application Server version 6.0 and updated programming standards such as J2EE 1.4. Also included were tools for visual portlet and portal development.
In 2006, IBM donated the Web Tools Platform (WTP) to Eclipse. WTP included tools for developing Web and Java EE applications. That year also saw the release of Rational Application Developer version 7.0, with new features supporting Java Server Faces, and tools for XSD and WSDL visualization and transforms. In this release, Rational Application Developer could be installed in a single workbench with other Rational tools.
In 2008, IBM released Rational Application Developer version 7.5. This release supported WebSphere Application Server version 7.0 as well as the new Java EE 5 programming standard. This release included tools for Service Component Architecture (SCA), a component-based programming model, and tools for communication enabled applications.
In 2010, IBM released Rational Application Developer version 8.0. This release supported WebSphere Application Server version 8.0 as well as the new Java EE 6 programming standard. This release included tools supporting the OSGi applications framework and cloud computing.
The latest version of Rational Application Developer is Version 8.0.4, which was released in November 2011.[14]