Two Plug-ins Rev Up Eclipse

摘要

Anyone who wonders whether there is any middle ground between the rough-and-ready approach of open source and the staid polish of proprietary software should examine the MyEclipse and NitroX development environments. Both are commercial collections of plug-ins and tools that add a number of useful features for developing server-side applications to the free Eclipse open source IDE. The two environments come from companies with different approaches. M7's NitroX is focused on creating Web applications. It comes in three different versions at three different price points, but the core of all three is AppXRay, a deep introspection technology that integrates the name spaces of the Java and XML configuration code. The simplest of the three versions offers help debugging JSP code for a $299 yearly subscription; the middle version adds support for Struts applications for an additional $200; and the high-end version includes tools for creating and debugging JSFs (Java Server Faces) for another $200 annually. There are some discounts for multiple licenses.