IBM's Rational Software unit says it plans to expand the ranks of Java developers and compete with Microsoft's Visual Studio tools for more enterprise developers.

Rational announced their new Atlantic tool-set, which "will be easier to use to build interactive Web pages." They will more thoroughly integrated with each other and tied closer to the Eclipse open-source developer's framework, said Mike Devlin, general manager of IBM Rational Software, a unit of the IBM Software Group.

IBM notes the upcoming war for enterprise developers

"There's a sea change coming," said Duncan Buell, general manager of Rational developer relations. "Businesses are deciding their primary architecture for building software," and it's likely to be either a Java approach or a Windows-Visual Studio approach. If Java programmers continue to grow at their present rate, there will be 2.5 million Java developers sometime in 2005, Devlin said. IBM has been on the comeback trail in the tools market since 2001, as its VisualAge tools failed to gain a dominant place in the development tools market. It responded that year by making an internal developers workbench available as open-source code--the Eclipse project. Eclipse now represents one of the top three development environment used by Java programmers.

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http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=26351

http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=9465

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/teamsystem/default.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnvsent/html/vsts-over.asp

"There's a sea change coming," said Duncan Buell, general manager of Rational developer relations. "Businesses are deciding their primary architecture for building software..."

I'm glad that industry begins to appreciate application frameworks. But I had hoped that HTML would peak soon, and that industry would move on to rich clients (eg, Swing, SVG). Apparently HTML will be hot for longer than I originally thought, else why bother inventing Atlantic? It amazes me that my developing fat clients exclusively is an obscure specialty. Should it be?

"There's a sea change coming," said Duncan Buell, general manager of Rational developer relations. "Businesses are deciding their primary architecture for building software..."

I'm glad that industry begins to appreciate application frameworks. But I had hoped that HTML would peak soon, and that industry would move on to rich clients (eg, Swing, SVG). Apparently HTML will be hot for longer than I originally thought, else why bother inventing Atlantic? It amazes me that my developing fat clients exclusively is an obscure specialty. Should it be?

I agree Brian. I think it has peaked. I also thought that IBM thought that too (Eclipse being a platform for all things and IBM making it their platform for all things). I'm just not sure the "industry" is ready to let go. I wish they would.

I gather the name "Atlantic" is a code name for "offshore." This is in line with previous IBM naming conventions like "Eclipse" that are aimed at eclipsing Sun. Who gets eclipsed this time?

The focus of Atlantic seems to be on collaboration through better integration of ClearCase/Quest with Rational's modeling tools and Eclipse so that developers around the world can collaborate.

The tools are going to cost a lot. Like other Rational tools, productivity may not go up because of them but the labor cost of the developer using them may down drastically.

Like other Rational tools, productivity may not go up because of them but the labor cost of the developer using them may down drastically.

I would be very interested what tools Rational brought to the marketplace that allowed for cheap labor development? The once I came across had "give me highly skilled expertes and tools" all written across it.

I would be very interested what tools Rational brought to the marketplace that allowed for cheap labor development?

Of all version control systems, Atria's ClearCase most significantly de-skills branching, merging, and directory versioning.

Like other Rational tools, productivity may not go up because of them but the labor cost of the developer using them may down drastically.

If labor cost goes down, then productivity by definition goes up.