"We're glad to offer some of the hottest products coming out of Sun's research and development organization directly to the growing NetBeans community," said Jeff Jackson, senior vice president, Java Developer Platforms as Sun announced yestdrday at NetBeans Day, a precursor to the main JavaOne Conference this weel, the immediate availability of four new plug-in modules for the open source NetBeans IDE.

 "The NetBeans Platform offers a robust, proven IDE and a modular plug-in architecture," Jackson continued, "which is the ideal vehicle for delivering Sun innovations to all developers interested in trying our very latest technologies. For example, Jackpot offers a whole new capability beyond simple refactoring. These plug- ins span the spectrum of Java technology, from programming for Java-enabled devices to grid computing and vividly demonstrate the broad range and depth of support for Java technologies available in the NetBeans IDE."

The new plug-in modules include Jackpot, Real Time Java technology, Web Services Interoperability Technology (WSIT) and Grid Compute Server for NetBeans. The new toolkit additions embody Sun's commitment to bring new ideas directly from Sun engineers to the developer community.

"We're pleased to see Sun making efforts to expand their open-source IDE and think the combination of Java, C, and C++ will make for a powerful developer platform," said Terri Hall, vice president, Software Alliances, AMD. "Sun and AMD have formed a strong alliance around new products like the Sun Ultra(TM) 20 and Ultra 40 Workstations -- which clearly target the developer audience. Encouraging collaboration among the core developers in the NetBeans community is a sure way to drive improvements in performance and productivity on our platform."

Technical Details of the Four Plug-ins

Jackpot Module

The Jackpot module -- intelligent code re-engineering -- was developed by Sun Labs. It provides the ability to perform scriptable transformations on Java technology source code. The Jackpot module enables "next-generation refactoring" -- global source code transformations based on a comprehensive model of the project's structure.

Jackpot can be used to find bad coding practices and repair them, or upgrade projects to use new versions of libraries. These changes are either made with scripts that use a custom Java pattern matching language, or with Java classes that extend the Jackpot transformation engine. The module comes with support for writing transformations so that it is easy to develop and distribute custom transformations within engineering organizations.

Real Time Java Technology

The Real-Time Java module provides editing support for applications using real time APIs for Java technology (JSR 1), while supporting the cross- platform development features needed to create real-time applications intended for specific devices. Real-Time Java technology regulates the ability to reliably and predictably reason about and control the temporal behavior of program logic.

For the 2006 JavaOne Conference, Sun has developed a Slot Car Programming Challenge to expose developers to Real Time Java technology. The track is located in the "Experience the Power of Java" area of the JavaOne pavilion (#902). Developers who enter the Challenge will write a polling loop using Real Time Java technology to gather sensor data and give the small, 1/24 scale cars the appropriate voltage to move around the track. The 10 best times at the end of the Conference will get prizes and the top three will be invited to participate in a "race off" during James Gosling's keynote on Friday, May 19, 2006.

Web Services Interoperability Technology (WSIT)

WSIT is a key component of the Sun internal project code-named "Tango" and part of the ongoing web services interoperability efforts between Sun and Microsoft. The WSIT module will help facilitate development of cross-platform web services. WSIT provides ground-breaking capabilities that enable higher levels of quality of service and reliability than is typical in web services software today. Sun is releasing a NetBeans 5.5 plug-in for WSIT to help facilitate development of cross-platform web services.

Compute Server Plug-in for NetBeans

Compute Server Plug-in for NetBeans helps developers take advantage of countless opportunities for innovation that are presented by the Sun Grid Compute Utility (http://www.network.com/). The Compute Server plug-in is intended to help Java technology developers use the Sun Grid Compute Utility for the distributed execution of parallel computations. Significant features include Compute Server project templates, support for local (off-grid) debugging and automatic packaging of application code and data for delivery to the Sun Grid. The Compute Server plug-in is available for free download under the Apache License 2.0, as part of the Compute Server project, a Sun Grid Developer Community project hosted at http://computeserver.developer.network.com.

Enterprise partners and customers can purchase enterprise support for NetBeans 5, Sun notes. Service programs supporting NetBeans are Sun Developer Expert Assistance (at $99 USD per request), Sun Software Service Plans and the new Developer Service Plans. The copany says that more information is located at http://developers.sun.com/services.