IBM Rational Application Developer: Wikis

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Top rankings for IBM Rational Application Developer

19th	Top rapid application development tools
8th	Top Eclipse-based software

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Updated live from Wikipedia, last check: June 02, 2012 09:20 UTC (41 seconds ago)

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IBM Rational Application Developer

Rational Application Developer with the Java code editor open
Developer(s)	IBM
Initial release	?
Stable release	7.5.4 (September 25, 2009) _[+/−]
Preview release	_[+/−]
Written in	Java
Operating system	Microsoft Windows, Linux
Available in	?
Type	Integrated development environment
License	IBM EULA
Website	ibm.com/..

IBM Rational Application Developer for WebSphere Software (RAD) is an integrated development environment (IDE), made by IBM's Rational Software division, for visually designing, constructing, testing, and deploying Web services, portals, and Java Enterprise Edition (JEE) applications.

1 Overview
2 History
3 Criticisms
4 List of Eclipse based products
5 See also
6 External links
7 References

Overview

Rational Application Developer is an integrated development environment that helps Java software developers design, develop, and deploy their applications. It contains specialized wizards, editors, and validators for a variety of technologies:

Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE): This architecture is used to build distributed Web and enterprise applications. Java EE applications include: Enterprise Java beans (EJB) applications for distributed, secure applications with transactional support, Java Persistence API (JPA) applications to access persistent data, and JavaServer Pages (JSP) or JavaServer Faces (JSF) for developing presentation logic.^[1]
Web services: A Web service is a self-contained, self-describing, modular application that can be published, located, and invoked across the Internet. Web services tools enable software developers to discover existing Web services for integration, create Web services from existing artifacts or from Web Services Description Language (WSDL) files, and to deploy Web services to a variety of environments.^[2]
Service Component Architecture (SCA): SCA enables software reuse by assembling a set of services into a composite application. SCA development tools provide graphical wiring of components to form composite services, associate protocol bindings and quality of service intents to SCA components, and package SCA assets for deployment.^[3]
Extensible Markup Language (XML): XML is a generic language that can be used to describe any kind of content in a structured way. XML is used extensively to create Web services. XML tools include DTD, XSL, schema, and mapping editors.^[4]
Java EE Connector (J2C): J2C tools enable applications to access operations and data on enterprise information systems such as CICS® or IMS™. Wizards assist with file importing, data mapping, and the creation of Java classes and methods to access data.
Web application: Web applications range from Web sites, to complex applications that use JSF to access data, or Rich Internet applications that use Asynchronous JavaScript™ and XML (Ajax). The workbench includes wizards, editors, and palettes to assist with the creation and deployment of Web applications.^[5]

Rational Application Developer includes tools to improve code quality. A Java profiling tool helps to analyze an application’s performance, memory usage, and threading problems. A software analysis tool identifies patterns and antipatterns in application code, and compares code to coding standards.

To manage source code, a development team can configure Rational Application Developer to work with a source code repository system. The product ships with connectors to IBM Rational ClearCase for source control and IBM Rational ClearQuest for defect management. It also ships with a Rational Team Concert client that can be used for both source control and defect management.

The workbench includes tools for deploying an application to a local or remote server. It contains test environments for IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM WebSphere Portal. It also supports Apache Tomcat. Using these tools, a software developer can test their application locally before publishing it to a production server.

Because Rational Application Developer is Eclipse-based, it can support the third-party plug-ins for Eclipse, as well as plug-ins specifically for Rational tools.

A 2009 study by Evan’s Data Corporation rated Rational Application Developer highest in terms of user satisfaction among IDEs.^[6]

History

In 2001, IBM donated the Eclipse Platform into Open Source to enable community-driven development of a Java workbench and tools.^[7] Eclipse was based on standards like J2EE and was designed with a plug-in based framework so that vendors could easily extend the features of the workbench.

Also in 2001, IBM replaced the VisualAge for Java and WebSphere Studio products with WebSphere Studio Application Developer (WSAD), version 4.0. WSAD extended the Eclipse platform and included tools to develop Web services and XML applications, and for performance profiling.

In 2002, IBM released version 5.0 of WSAD adding a Java Visual Editor, an XSL debugger, and test and analysis tools. Applications could be deployed to WebSphere Application Server version 5.0. New supported programming standards included J2EE 1.3.

In 2003, IBM completed the purchase of Rational Software^[8] and a year later, replaced WSAD with Rational Application Developer version 6.0. This release supported WebSphere Application Server version 6.0 and updated programming standards such as J2EE 1.4. Also included were tools for visual portlet and portal development.

In 2006, IBM donated the Web Tools Platform (WTP) to Eclipse. WTP included tools for developing Web and Java EE applications. That year also saw the release of Rational Application Developer version 7.0, with new features supporting Java Server Faces, and tools for XSD and WSDL visualization and transforms. In this release, Rational Application Developer could be installed in a single workbench with other Rational tools.

In 2008, IBM released Rational Application Developer version 7.5. This release supported WebSphere Application Server version 7.0 as well as the new Java EE programming standard. This release included tools for Service Component Architecture (SCA), a component-based programming model, and tools for communication enabled applications.

The latest version of Rational Application Developer is Version 7.5.5, which was released in December 2009^[9].

Criticisms

One of the most costly IDEs available, yet based on an open source project.
Very memory intensive. Running RAD and WAS can consume 1GB of RAM. This makes RAD very impractical for local development without a significant amount of RAM installed.
Large footprint. Consumes several GB of disk space for a default installation.
Slow. Starting a local version of WebSphere can take 15 minutes of a developer's time. The WAS must be restarted several times daily depending on code changes that are made.