Big Blue sails Atlantic (in Rational manner)

IBM has supplied a sneak peek of Atlantic, the next version of the Rational software development platform. The company previewed the new set up at the annual Rational Software Development User conference in Grapevine, Texas.

Atlantic will include several new tools for the Workplace product family, designed to simplify the process of application design and deployment. New technologies IBM has integrated into the suite include Service Data Objects, JavaServer Faces and Unified Modeling Language (UML) 2.0. The updates will be integrated with the Eclipse 3.0 open source computing platform.

The changes represent a greater integration between Rational and WebSphere, according to Sridhar Iyengar, chief technical strategist for IBM Rational. This will make it easier for development teams to collaborate, he told the conference, eWeek reports.

Mike Devlin, general manager of IBM Rational, said the platform is the cornerstone of its software development community: "Software development should be based on an open and standard development environment that results in software that is easy to deploy, easy to use, highly integrated and of the highest quality."

At the conference, IBM got plenty of mileage out of its commitment to the UML 2.0, specification, in comparison to Microsoft's decision to go it alone. Iyengar argued that Microsoft was potentially isolating its developers by not following UML, eWeek reports.

IBM Rational user conference news is here. ®

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