Is Oracle being Eclipsed?
In a post earlier this year, my partner here at MWD commented on the
growing momentum around the Eclipse. It seems that Oracle is feeling the effects. A number of news sites, for example
here, are reporting that Oracle will announce free availability of its JDeveloper 10g Java development tool at next week’s JavaOne conference. Oracle’s Rick Schultz, VP of
Oracle Fusion middleware, states that the primary motivation is to drive interest in the Fusion middleware products. Whilst this may well be the case, I think that Eclipse has more than a little to do with it. Oracle is already involved in a number of Eclipse initiatives, including object-relational mapping based around its own TopLink technology and EJB 3.0, and has proposed a new project based around Java Server Faces (JSF). Clearly, the company wants to ensure that is left standing in the wake of the Eclipse momentum and that its tooling is available as Eclipse plug-ins. Schultz may claim the company remains committed to JDeveloper but I question whether it really make sense to invest in both JDeveloper and Eclipse for the long term? Only time will tell but Oracle has much larger fish to fry in its ongoing battle with
business applications nemesis SAP and the integration of PeopleSoft and Retek.
