Extended Development Experience Enhanced
Rational Software announced that it has expanded its "Extended Development Experience" to architects and designers with the introduction of Rational XDE Modeler, a new member of the Rational XDE family, and added more power for Java and .NET developers by enhancing Rational XDE Professional and Rational PurifyPlus, the first and only runtime analysis product to run inside the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET integrated development environment (IDE).
Rational has also strengthened support for developers of embedded software by enhancing Rational Rose RealTime.
Rational’s "Extended Development Experience" for developers provides a frictionless design and development environment by tightly integrating the Rational XDE product family into IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, empowering developers to work directly within their IDE. With this release, Rational integrates Rational XDE Modeler into these IDEs while integrating Rational SuiteTestStudio into the Eclipse-based WebSphere Studio IDE and Rational PurifyPlus into the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET IDE. The "Extended Development Experience" includes integrations with Rational’s complete lifecycle of software development solutions and is augmented with the comprehensive content and skill-building resources on the Rational Developer Network.
Rational XDE Modeler
Today, most architects and designers use a variety of tools to represent their work; from pen and paper to whiteboards and basic drawing tools. While this medium may be effective when communicating to non-technical audiences, such as management and customers, it lacks the semantics to effectively communicate with the rest of the development team. The translation from paper to code leaves information gaps and often results in architectural decay, which occurs when software increasingly diverges from its specification over time.
Rational XDE Modeler is a new product for architects and designers that solves this problem by enabling architects and designers to create and communicate their designs in visual models that use the industry-standard Unified Modeling Language (UML) combined with free-form drawing. Developers using Rational XDE Professional can then use these models as the basis for their implementation, speeding the development of business applications. Because both Rational XDE Modeler and Rational XDE Professional run inside IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer, IBM WebSphere Workbench (built on Eclipse technology) and Microsoft Visual Studio.NET, they allow architects, designers, and developers to share a common user experience.
"As an architect, I can use Rational XDE Modeler to create models and diagrams at any level of abstraction, from free-form diagrams for management consumption, to detailed design models for translation into code," said Jeff Fedor, chief technology officer for Covarity.
"In addition, the patterns within Rational XDE Modeler allow me to control my designs and implementations through automated transformations of analysis models. This automation also allows my architecture to be more effective because it is consistent and repeatable."
Enhancements to Rational XDE Professional
Rational says provides new benefits for Java and .NET developers with the following enhancements:
- New data modelling capabilities that enable developers to create a visual design of tables, table spaces, and logical databases in one diagram. By using Rational XDE Professional for modelling the database and the application, developers can leverage customisable patterns for common database solutions. Unlike traditional data modelling tools, Rational XDE Professional is a UML-based data-modelling tool that brings together designers, architects and developers who need to understand database designs and how they interact with and map to, business applications.
- New Web publishing and reporting capabilities that allow developers, architects, and data modellers to share models with all stakeholders and generate reports, in HTML format, on model elements and diagrams. This facilitates additional communication among all members of the development team, saving time and improving the project’s predictability and success.
- New "assisted modelling" capabilities for C# developers that help .NET developers realise the value of modelling, even with only a basic knowledge of the UML. This unique new capability allows developers using Microsoft Visual C# .NET to build UML models using familiar C# "coding terms." Special wizards translate the C# terms into perfect UML models, enabling these developers to more effectively utilise Rational XDE Professional for their development projects.
"The addition of data modelling to Rational XDE gave OneSource the ability to build our application model incorporating our existing database structures," said Mark Israel, chief architect for OneSource Information Services. "This capability gave OneSource a head start on our class modelling instead of starting from scratch. The ability to keep the application and data models synchronised helped us to update the database with the additions needed, based on our new application requirements. This allows OneSource to deliver new functionality to its customers."
Rational XDE Professional v2002 Release 2: Java Platform Edition and Rational XDE Modeler v2002 Release 2 have been certified "Ready for WebSphere Studio Software" by IBM. They are among the few products that meet IBM WebSphere Workbench integration criteria for using Workbench Application Program Interfaces (APIs) and for following Workbench User Interface guidelines. This integration provides a better, smoother, more integrated experience when using Rational XDE standalone with the Workbench, or Rational XDE with WebSphere Studio Application Developer.
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