Treffer: Eclipse: A platform for integrating development tools.

Modern n-tier applications are developed using components implemented in many different technologies, including HTML, Java™, JavaServer Pages™ (JSP™), Enterprise JavaBeans™, connectors, COBOL or PL/1 programs, and relational database schemas. Creating an effective integrated development environment (IDE) for use in programming these applications presents some special challenges because a large number of different tool technologies have to be tightly integrated in support of development task flows. In order to meet these challenges, the Eclipse Platform was designed to serve as the common basis for diverse IDE-based products, providing open APIs (application programming interfaces) to facilitate this integration. This paper describes the overall architecture of the Eclipse Platform and the www.eclipse.org open source organization and consortium created to facilitate broad industry adoption of this platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]