IBM Delivers Server-Based Programming Tools for Leveraging Corporate IT Investments
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SOMERS, NY (June 30, 1998) – IBM today announced enhancements to its VisualAge* enterprise development tools for building powerful and scalable e-business applications on the server. The tools help companies combine the benefits of both modeling and Internet technologies with the scalability of enterprise application systems, easing the path to e-business.
Enhanced versions of the new tools, available immediately, include VisualAge TeamConnection Enterprise Server*, VisualAge Generator*,
VisualAge Smalltalk and VisualAge Pacbase*. An upgraded version of VisualAge C++ will also be available this summer.
“Our 1998 International DARTS survey results show that more businesses plan to use IBM’s VisualAge than any other enterprise class development tool,” said Karen Boucher, Vice President of Research at The Standish Group. “This latest delivery of functionality for VisualAge shows IBM’s continued commitment to provide developers with innovative features including life cycle support, enhanced Java interoperability and productivity enhancements.”
Best-of-Breed Tools Protect Investments
Corporate expansion, mergers and acquisitions, and the move to e-business are rapidly changing IT landscapes, forcing companies to operate in increasingly complex technology environments. In response, IBM continues to advance the features and capabilities of its VisualAge family of
products, protecting customer investments in both developer skills and technology. The VisualAge family, including the products announced today, provides an integrated cross-platform, cross-language development environment for enterprise developers. Programmers benefit from the ability to seamlessly integrate new business logic with legacy systems, and to deploy and interoperate with new Java environments.
“With today’s multi-tier enterprises running on a variety of platforms, customers need a complete set of tools that will let them design business
applications that are scalable and interoperable”, said Emilie McCabe, vice president of marketing, IBM Application Development and Object Technology. “IBM’s VisualAge family provides the features customers need to derive maximum business value from their enterprise applications.”
IBM Teams with Other Leading Software Vendors to Deliver Industry-Leading Modeling Solutions Based on XML Standard
VisualAge development tools highlight IBM’s commitment to providing standards-based tools to the development community. By embracing industry standards such as Unified Modeling Language (UML) and eXtensible Markup Language (XML), IBM’s tools provide streamlined methods of sharing application and data models, regardless of tool or programming platform, in collaborative environments. This enables developers to create secure, distributed applications in a team development environment in a consistent and interoperable format.
IBM has recently announced several initiatives surrounding XML, the standard for defining, validating and sharing document formats on the Web.
By utilizing XML-compliant tools, development teams working in multiple locations on the same application will have the ability to create and
deploy models in a standardized fashion, regardless of programming language or tool.
In news announced last week, IBM will sell ERwin**, an advanced data modeling tool, as part of IBM’s VisualAge family of development products,
and will allow ERwin users to benefit from VisualAge DataAtlas’s DB2 database optimization capability. This joint agreement will offer customers extended modeling options that build on their current investments in ERwin and VisualAge DataAtlas.
In addition, IBM plans to continue to leverage the UML and XML standards to give VisualAge development tools object-oriented modeling support from some of the industry’s leading analysis and design tools, including tools from Rational Software** and SELECT Software.** This increased standardization will enable development teams working with tools from different vendors the ability to collaborate on projects with greater consistency and compatibility.
Product Enhancements
Today’s enhancements include an enterprise-scale repository for managing data from multiple sources, increased Java support for traditionally
skilled programmers, and integrated support for UML-based object-oriented application development.
Product enhancements are as follows:
VisualAge TeamConnection Enterprise Server V3.0 — Enabling project-wide coordination of development activities across all phases of a project’s life-cycle, VisualAge TeamConnection sets the standard in software configuration management. The new version supports XML (eXtensible Markup Language), an industry standard for defining, validating and sharing document formats on the Web. Support of this standard within VisualAge TeamConnection enables a new class of applications to present and manipulate repository meta-data with ease, providing web-based collaborative application development for the VisualAge family of tools.
With its tight integration of configuration and library management, version control, process control for change management, build management and support of electronic delivery, VisualAge TeamConnection enables project-wide coordination of development activities across all phases of a project’s life cycle. The new version provides integration with Lotus Notes for effective management of requirements, design documents and test cases throughout the development process. These features, combined with IBM’s repository technology and integration with IBM’s DB2 Universal Database, ensure the integrity and scalability of development assets. Integration with Tivoli Software Distribution 3.0 gives developers the ability to distribute developed applications to heterogeneous and end-user platforms.
VisualAge Generator V3.1 — Used to develop systems that were used for the 1998 Olympics, VisualAge Generator is a rapid application development tool that generates client and server code for a large range of multi-tier platforms, while masking the complexities of object-oriented development constructs and complex middleware connections. Today’s enhancements provide developers with increased Java interoperability, by delivering capabilities to generate JavaBeans** components for clients and servers, as well as run Java applets in OS/390* servers. In addition, developers creating Java clients can now interface with the highly acclaimed interactive testing facility. VisualAge Generator V3.1 also provides increased international language support, making it easier for developers to productively generate applications in their native language.
VisualAge Pacbase V2.5 — A model-driven CASE application development environment that covers the complete development life-cycle to address development for all types of applications across more than 30 operating systems with native support for more than 20 databases. The new version integrates VisualAge for Java for client generation, which makes it easier for developers to utilize the benefits of Java when designing applications for the Web. VisualAge Pacbase 2.5 supports VisualAge Smalltalk clients, VisualAge Java clients and any COM-compliant client. VisualAge Pacbase JavaBean support enables the development of client/server, applet-based and servlet-based applications, which invoke Pacbase servers.
VisualAge Smalltalk Enterprise V4.5 — A pure object-oriented (OO) application development environment ideal for building complex business applications that must accommodate frequently changing requirements. This new release delivers OO analysis and design capability for building multi-tiered business applications with IBM’s new UML Designer, a tool that allows designers to engineer models that can generate Smalltalk or Java classes. Integration of persistent, transaction-enabled objects is now possible with ObjectExtender. VisualAge Smalltalk also supports the development of full CICS*-based server applications that can interoperate with Java clients via Remote Method Invocation (RMI) or Internet Interoperability Protocol (IIOP), industry protocols used in applications for communication between business objects. This allows developers to build, test and debug transactions directly in Smalltalk, expanding the scope of Smalltalk programs on NT and UNIX servers, as well as MVS.
VisualAge C++ V4.0 — A highly-productive C++ (strikethrough: OO) application development environment known for building applications that require very high performance. This new version improves developers’ productivity with incremental compiling capabilities, a unique technology breakthrough for C++. Rather than having to compile the entire application, compiles and linkages need only be performed on code that has changed since last compile. This enables developers to quickly iterate through the edit, compile, debug and test phases of developing applications. In addition, increased middleware access and automatic code generation features give developers upgrade and maintenance capabilities in a multi-tiered environment.
In an effort to foster studies of compiling technologies, IBM provided its incremental compiling technology to some of the leading educational institutions in the U.S. and Canada, including Stanford University, Harvard University, University of Virginia, Brown University, Canada’s Queens University and others.
Source: IBM