Eclipse launches the Web Tools project

After the final release of the Eclipse 3.0 IDE came another interesting announcement. Eclipse
has announced a Web Tools Platform project
that includes Web Standard Tools and J2EE Standard Tools.

The Web Tools Platform project aims to support development of distributed applications in a Java
environment. It focuses on standards such as JSP, JDBC and JTA,
but should eventually support technologies outside Java
such as PHP and ASP.NET.

The basic structure of the Web Tools Platform project consists of two independent subprojects.

• Web Standard Tools
• J2EE Standard Tools

The subprojects have different focuses. Web Standard Tools is for
developing the presentation layer of web applications with HTML, CSS, XSLT, XSD, ECMAScript and so on. Another aim
is to integrate web servers and servlet containers into Eclipse. The integration should
make deployment easier and also support debugging and server configuration.

J2EE Standard Tools, on the other hand, is for building applications based on J2EE 1.4 and deploying, testing and
debugging them on a J2EE server. The technologies include EJB, Servlet, JSP, JCA, JDBC, JTA, JMS, JMX, JNDI
and, of course, web services.

The Lomboz plug-in supplied the basis for J2EE Standard Tools.
Web Standard Tools builds on tools from IBM. You can already try out the whole Web Tools project. For comments
and links, see The Eclipse Web and J2EE Tools Platform Project is Now Live! on TSS.