EclipseCon is one of the few conferences where the embedded and enterprise software developer communities come together. Last year’s event marked the beginning for embedded vendors who were just establishing themselves in the community, and several had recently released their first Eclipse-based products.
This March, at the third annual EclipseCon sponsored by the Eclipse Foundation and in the Eclipse booth at Embedded Systems Conference, embedded solutions were more widely available and ready for designers to begin working with right away.
Eclipse getting larger
Eclipse Foundation executive director Mike Milinkovich’s update emphasized Eclipse’s continued growth. EclipseCon itself was once again sold out with more than 1,400 attendees. More than 140 technical sessions were available, along with 46 exhibitors and representation from 10 open source projects. The total number of Eclipse members rose from 91 to 130, while committers increased from 450 to 630. There are now 61 Eclipse projects, up from 38 last year.
At a high level, key developments include:
Sales force automation vendors salesforce.com and SugarCRM both joined the Eclipse Foundation.
Defense contractor EADS also joined the Eclipse Foundation.
The Application Lifecycle Framework (ALF) project is making strides to integrate life-cycle management tools in a framework based on Web services. The ALF project demonstrated its latest proof-of-concept code at the conference.
A PHP IDE project backed by Zend Technologies and IBM has been approved, working to add the popular open source Web development language to the list of supported languages with a targeted full release for September.
Ten projects have teamed into Callisto, a target release for this June, striving to make a range of updated Eclipse code easier for ISVs to pick up and use with a wider range of functionality than a single project point release. For the embedded community, Callisto will include C
The Device Software Development Platform (see the DSDP update in January’s Eclipse Perspective) project continues to expand in scope with improvements in device debugging, and new initiatives including mobile tools for Java, native application builder, and target management.
Brent Williams, an analyst with KeyBank Capital Markets, sees a new type of platform emerging – not from a single vendor, but from a set of vendors working on various pieces of the problem under umbrella strategies including Eclipse and other open source technologies. He sees what he calls Vista-driven chaos as Microsoft pushes their new operating system platform, paradoxically slowing its adoption as users look at a wide range of options. Eclipse is the right platform at exactly the right time to create a compelling alternative.
Noteworthy notions
As always, I anticipated the chance to sit down with several industry leaders at the conference and discuss trends and innovations. Here’s a snapshot of the items we uncovered.
The QNX, www.qnx.com, Momentics IDE was selected as a finalist in the Best Eclipse-Based Commercial Developer Tool category of the inaugural Eclipse Community Awards, a strong statement as to the progress of embedded development tools. Their latest tools are adding support for multicore platforms.
Lattix exhibited their new tool for architecture analysis using the Design Structure Matrix (DSM) methodology extended into what Lattix calls the Lightweight Dependency Model approach. In their demo, they can build the model for Eclipse, with more than 22,000 classes and 1.3 million dependencies, in about four seconds.
Remember the original Borland and their ubiquitous Turbo Pascal and Turbo C products – inexpensive, easy-to-use compilers for PCs? In Eclipse, Genuitec is applying this same business model for development tools. For an annual subscription of $29.95 for the MyEclipse 5.0 Standard Edition, users get a simple-to-use software motherboard for applications development.
Klocwork displayed their K7 analytical suite for defect discovery, architecture analysis and refactoring, security analysis, and development of metrics and custom analysis.
SlickEdit keeps updating their editor tools and working with the leading embedded IDE vendors to achieve better plug-in integration for products in development.
Catalyst Systems maintains development of their Openmake life cycle automation process tool. Catalyst has an eye on building completely reusable workflow tools ultimately targeted by the ALF project, but recognizes the existing make model, enhanced by the Openmake tool set, will be around for some time.
Discovery Machine showed their tools for knowledge capture and engineering, with the ability to build models, simulations, and intelligent agents without scripting languages or complex rule-based systems. Designers can sketch systems, view results of testing strategies, and build customized dashboards to aid in decision making.
Telelogic has extended modeling capability for embedded systems with its purchase of I-Logix and their Rhapsody Model Driven Development tools supporting methodologies including UML, SysML, and DoDAF.
Yes, there is a difference
I’m in a running dialog with several folks on how embedded and enterprise software development philosophies differ. Despite many common elements, the embedded community has a distinct flavor because its wants vary.
Embedded designers continue to look for innovative tools supporting a wide variety of embedded target hardware, and are generally concerned about code size, execution speed, and optimization. Embedded designers often want visibility into every detail of the interaction between software and hardware, while enterprise designers are usually concerned only with understanding and using the application programming interface. The efforts behind the DSDP project are targeting many of these needs, with experienced Eclipse contributors developing code within the project for a variety of tools.
Eclipse development for embedded use promises to be very interesting, and we’ll continue to feature viewpoints from leading technologists in this column to help you keep pace. As always, I like to hear from our readers on this or other topics we’re covering, and invite you to reach me at ddingee@opensystems-publishing.com.
