Background

Integrated Development Environments (IDE), also known as integrated design environment and integrated debugging environment,  are  tools that help computer programmers in developing software. IDEs normally consist of a source code editor, a repository managed by a version control system, a compiler or interpreter and build assistance tools. Typically an IDE is restricted to a specific programming language like Java, as in the JBuilder IDE or Eclipse. Eclipse, the open source IDE standard today, is an open development platform comprised of extensible frameworks, tools and runtimes for building, deploying and managing software across the lifecycle.

Eclipse IDE

Eclipse began as an IBM Canada project. It was developed by OTI (Object Technology International) as a replacement for IBM's VisualAge IDE. In November 2001, a consortium was formed to further the development of Eclipse as open source. In 2003, Eclipse was created as an IBM-independent foundation. Today, a large and dynamic collection of major technology vendors, universities, innovative start-ups and research institutions extend, complement and support the Eclipse Platform.

The Eclipse IDE or Workbench is one of the components of the Eclipse architecture.

The basis for Eclipse is the rich client platform (RCP). The following components constitute the rich client platform:

• Core platform (boot Eclipse, run plugins)
• OSGi (a standard bundling framework)
• SWT (a portable widget toolkit)
• JFace (file buffers, text handling, text editors)
• The Eclipse IDE Workbench (views, editors, perspectives, wizards)

While Eclipse's base language is Java, it also has  plugins for C\C++, Python, Ruby, Fortran, Cobol, PHP, JSP\Servlet, J2EE, OOD\OOP design tools and many more plugins. These all can be installed on the same IDE at the same time. They all have their own debugger and integrated IDE options.

NXTware IDE for Legacy program developers

As NXTware has evolved from its legacy NXTera middleware, eCube Systems has noticed that more and more of its clients still develop with legacy languages.  Since Unix developers have historically had their own built-in "IDE" in the powerful Unix environment with tools like vi, emacs, and make, Windows developers have not.  Most developers in a Windows environment think of an IDE as being a single GUI interface in which all development is done. This GUI provides typically large numbers of features for authoring, modifying, compiling, deploying and debugging software. The idea being that the IDE abstracts the configuration necessary to piece together command line utilities in a cohesive unit, which theoretically reduces the time to learn a language, and increases developer productivity.

Since many developers now use the Windows or Linux platform even if they are telnetting to a Unix box to do their server development, it makes sense that they might want an IDE to automate some of this development environment. Many of them still use RCS, CVS, make, vi and other unix tools to manage and develop software on Unix and use a separate JBuilder and Eclipse for their java applications.

NXTware IDE is based on the Eclipse platform, integrating and supporting the open source plugins for multiple languages including:

• C/C++
• COBOL
• FORTRAN
• Perl
• AIX
• Solaris
• HP-UX
• Linux Red Hat
• Windows
• IRIX
  

With NXTware IDE, developers now have a platform and language independent IDE: one that works on Unix, Microsoft, Linux, and IBM Operating Systems, and handles COBOL, FORTRAN, C, C++, Java, Perl, Basic, Pascal and many other current and legacy languages.  If you would like to find out more about NXTware IDE, contact us.