New Top-Level Eclipse Project Encourages Adoption of Open Standards for Model-Based Development; Borland and IBM Team to Drive Industry Support for Eclipse Modeling Project

Business Wire, May 15, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Eclipse Foundation today announced the creation of a new top-level project, called the Eclipse Modeling Project. The new project will focus on the evolution and promotion of model-based development technologies within the Eclipse community. Richard Gronback of Borland Software and Ed Merks of IBM were selected as project co-leaders, and are teaming to continue to advance Eclipse modeling technologies and to drive adoption of open standards related to software modeling. E[acute accent]A number of industry-leading organizations have committed to the project and are already using Eclipse-based modeling frameworks in their products, including Borland, Compuware, IBM, ILOG, Omondo and Oracle. E[acute accent]The goal of the top-level Eclipse Modeling Project is to unite several existing projects relating to modeling under one umbrella for the purposes of fostering collaboration, unifying direction and improving interoperability. Current projects include, but are not limited to:

E[acute accent]--Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) - Already widely adopted, EMF is a modeling framework and code generation facility for building tools and other applications based on a structured data model.

E[acute accent]--Graphical Modeling Framework (GMF) - GMF provides the fundamental infrastructure and components for developing visual design and modeling surfaces in Eclipse.

E[acute accent]--Unified Modeling Language 2.0 (UML2) - Based on the Object Management Group (OMG) specification, Eclipse UML2 is an EMF-based implementation of the UML 2.x metamodel for the Eclipse platform.

E[acute accent]--Generative Modeling Tools (GMT) - GMT aims to produce a set of research tools in the area of model-driven software development.

E[acute accent]"The Eclipse Modeling Project will promote wider adoption of the Eclipse-based modeling frameworks by organizations focused on model-based development," said Mike Milinkovich, executive director, Eclipse Foundation. "It will also encourage closer relationships with standards organizations, such as OMG, by providing open source implementations of important modeling standards." E[acute accent]"Borland is very excited to be co-leading the Eclipse Modeling Project and broadening our involvement in the community for the ultimate benefit of our customers," said Richard Gronback, Eclipse Modeling project co-leader and chief scientist, Borland Software Corporation. "Our participation in the project, and further use of Eclipse modeling technologies as the basis for our commercial products, will give customers a greater degree of interoperability and standards compliance, as well as help Borland focus on providing the next-generation of modeling products." E[acute accent]"IBM has a long heritage of support for modeling and model-driven development (MDD). We see model-driven development technology used in many areas across IBM products and services, including Rational Software Architect, Systems Developer and Software Modeler," said John Kellerman, manager, Eclipse Strategy, IBM. "The Eclipse top-level modeling project will provide a unified vision and focus to modeling and MDD efforts at Eclipse, spur innovation and help drive adoption of open standards and technologies in this domain. Through IBM's use of these technologies, we're able to provide tighter integration across our commercial offerings, more robust sharing of development time information and a better overall user experience for our customers."

E[acute accent]Open Support for Driving Industry Standards

E[acute accent]The success of Eclipse and its popularity throughout the IT industry has helped drive the adoption of open standards. Furthermore, as standards bodies such as OMG continue to focus on modeling specifications, the Eclipse Modeling Project will strive to facilitate communication and stronger working relationships with standards organizations. Currently, the Eclipse Modeling Project supports or anticipates supporting in the future standards that include the Unified Modeling Language (UML) Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) related specifications, such as Query, View, Transformation (QVT); Object Constraint Language (OCL); MOF to Text (MOF2Text); and XML Metadata Interchange (XMI). E[acute accent]"The Object Management Group has been involved with and seen the benefits of the Eclipse Project from the beginning. There is a strong positive relationship between the standards we produce and the open-source community's development efforts. In fact, acceptance and use of Model-Driven Architecture, our flagship standard, has been spurred on by contributions of the open source community," said Dr. Richard Soley, chairman and CEO at OMG. "We are delighted to see these important specifications moving from written standards to open source implementations, providing real solutions to real, complex problems that exist today."

E[acute accent]Industry Supports New Modeling Framework Top-Level Project

E[acute accent]"Compuware, a strategic member of the Eclipse Foundation and leader within the OMG, is excited that modeling is being given the prominence of a top-level Eclipse project," said Paul Czarnik, vice president of Architecture, Compuware. "Modeling helps Compuware customers reduce the time and cost to deliver enterprise applications, and we plan to be a contributor to and adopter of modeling within Eclipse." E[acute accent]"ILOG is committed to the new Eclipse Modeling Project, since we believe it will mean a more seamless connection between our ILOG JRules 6 Business Rule Management System (BRMS) and other complementary products, resulting in higher productivity for our customers," said Joel Cheuoua, BRMS architect. "In our latest release, we're using EMF in both our Eclipse-based and our Web-based tools and repositories to define how rule model artifacts are managed. We find it to be an ideal way to handle the extensibility and the persistence required for our data." E[acute accent]"The Eclipse Modeling Project means that developers will now have more options when choosing a modeling methodology to simplify and streamline their development efforts," said Dennis Leung, vice president, Oracle Fusion Middleware Development at Oracle. "Oracle is already working with its partners and customers to deliver TopLink support for persisting EMF models into a relational database. This project will help ensure TopLink interoperability with other modeling technologies." E[acute accent]More information about the Eclipse Modeling Project can be found at www.eclipse.org/modeling.