Genuitec to introduce MyEclipse IDE for the Spring Framework

InfoWorld - Genuitec will introduce on Tuesday a version of its MyEclipse IDE for use with the popular open-source Spring Framework for Java development, sans the backing of the major developer of the framework itself, SpringSource.

Also in the Spring vein Tuesday, SpringSource is discontinuing dm Server, a Java application server based on modular OSGi technology, as a commercial product. SpringSource is looking to farm out continued development of dm Server to the Eclipse Foundation.

[ VMware acquired SpringSource last summer. ]

Genuitec, for its part, is offering its $199-per-year MyEclipse for Spring IDE at the end of this month. Based on a collaboration between Genuitec and Skyway Software, MyEclipse for Spring offers MyEclipse functionality as well as scaffolding technology allowing access to editors for rapid creation of applications, Genuitec said. Application scaffolding generates large portions of the application using best practices, said Todd Williams, Genuitec vice president of technology.

The MVC (Model View Controller) scaffolding generates Spring MVC CRUD (Create Read Update Delete) applications from database tables, plain old Java objects and Java Persistence Architecture entities.

Currently, Spring developers can use the Genuitec MyEclipse Pro IDE for code-level development. "What's new [with the Spring-centered IDE] is a level above [Pro] that enables you to create entire tiers or connected tiers of the application," Williams said.

Spring technologies supported include "everything from their database persistence layer through their services layer through [Spring] Web Flow," which is Spring GUI technology, Williams said.

But Adam Fitzgerald,  director of developer relations at SpringSource, was dismissive of the Genuitec product. He instead endorsed the free SpringSource Tool Suite as a mechanism for building Spring applications.

"I would recommend going with the tool that comes [from] the company that created Spring," Fitzgerald said. "[The suite] really is the most cutting-edge way to build Spring apps."

Also featured in the MyEclipse for Spring are project bootstrapping, for building Spring configuration files and adding Java libraries and Web resources. Enhanced development editors offering simplified configuration of services, controllers and Spring Web Flow.

Meanwhile, SpringSource Tuesday will detail plans to hand off development of dm Server to Eclipse, but with SpringSource still participating in development and offering support subscriptions. The project under Eclipse jurisdiction would be called Virgo; the formal switchover to Eclipse is expected to take a couple of months, Fitzgerald said.

In explaining the move, Fitzgerald cited difficulties in getting mass adoption of OSGi at the enterprise level, even though OSGi offers greater control of system dependencies and modularization of application components.

"Certainly, dm Server was not as successfully adopted [as] something like [Apache] Tomcat or [SpringSource] tc Server," but there have been successful use cases, said Fitzgerald.