"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," said Jeff Jackson (pictured), senior vice president of Java, Enterprise, and Developer Software at Sun, as plans were announced to open-source major elements of Sun's Java Studio Enterprise IDE.

"Java Studio Enterprise is the crown jewel of Sun's tools," Jackson continued, "providing a complete solution for architecting and implementing large-scale enterprise applications. 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, Jackson explained, is a flexible API-level development tool that is designed to run on top of the NetBeans 5.5 IDE. "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:

• 2-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 which help 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 - leveraging the business integration technology and expertise from Sun's acquisition of SeeBeyond - are included for building composite applications.

Sun has committed to open sourcing its entire software portfolio using industry-standard open source licensing models and many of the components of its integrated platform are already available as open source, including the Solaris OS, the Sun Java Application Server, and several key underlying services like single sign-on capabilities and the ability to connect multiple, independent applications in a standard way.

This is a sphere of activity in which Sun aims to be an industry-leading pioneer. "Open systems," said Jackson, "form the business and technology cornerstone of Sun Microsystems."

For more information, readers of Enterprise Open Source Magazine might care to surf over to www.sun.com/opensource.