Sun Microsystems Inc. plans to open source major elements of the Sun Java Studio Enterprise as a project on NetBeans.org. This new project will be released as the NetBeans Enterprise Pack.

"Java Studio Enterprise is the crown jewel of Sun's tools, providing a complete solution for architecting and implementing large-scale enterprise applications," said Jeff Jackson, senior vice president of Java, Enterprise, and Developer Software at Sun. "Making it available to the NetBeans community, we've expanded the range of features that developers can adopt, customize, and deploy for more productive development with the Java Enterprise System. The NetBeans Enterprise Pack represents a significant step in Sun's renewed commitment to developers by sharing technology, cultivating community, and investing in open source."

The NetBeans Enterprise Pack will encompass a flexible API-level development tool that is designed to run on top of the NetBeans 5.5 IDE, according to Sun. The solution-based tools of the NetBeans Enterprise Pack can make it easier to work on the architecture and implementation of complex applications at a higher level of abstraction.

The feature set includes:
-- Two-way UML modeler for architecting and reverse engineering complex enterprise applications. UML tools generate diagrams and keep them in sync with source changes without adding markers to the source code. Full support for the current version of the UML specification is provided.
-- A set of XML infrastructure and visual editing tools designed to enable developers to manage complexity in their XML files. These tools are intended to provide a base that can be extended by third parties.
-- Orchestration and SOA tools are included for building composite applications. These leading-edge SOA tools leverage the business integration technology and expertise from Sun's acquisition of SeeBeyond.

Sun says it  "has committed to open sourcing its entire software portfolio using industry-standard open source licensing models to allow customers to have easy and broad access to all of its source code."  Many of the components of
Sun's integrated platform are already available as open source.