Ganymede Press Release

Below is a draft of the press release to announce the Ganymede release train. Everyone is invited to add content and comments to the release. Feel free to add your favourite new features in the Ganymede release. Please try to be brief and to the point. We may have to edit and prioritize the content if it gets too long. Really long press releases tend to be not well received by the press.

The goal is to have it finished by June 18.

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Eclipse Delivers Its Annual Release Train

Ottawa, Canada – June 25, 2008 -- The Eclipse Foundation and the entire Eclipse community is pleased to announce the availability of the Ganymede Release, the annual release train developed by the Eclipse community. The Ganymede Release is a coordinated release of 24 different Eclipse project teams and represents over 18 million lines of code.

Key new features from the release include:

Equinox and Runtime Projects

• A new provisioning system, called p2, makes it easier for Eclipse users to install and update Eclipse.
• Equinox has added two new security features, including 1) a Preferences-like storage for sensitive data such as passwords and login credentials. The information is encrypted using Java encryption mechanisms and 2) the ability to easily use the Java authentication service (JAAS) in Equinox.
• RAP 1.1 makes it easier to build great looking, scalable and modular web applications running on the Equinox platform. New features include 1) the ability to customize the look & feel with Presentation Factories and CSS and 2) the ability to store application state information on a per user basis.
• Eclipse Communication Framework (ECF) has added real-time shared editing and other communications features to allow developers to communicate and collaborate from within Eclipse.

Modeling

• New Ecore Tools project provides developers a graphical environment for creating, editing and maintaining EMF Ecore models.
• Enhanced Resource APIs in EMF to fully support REST, including support for the full CRUD life cycle.

Developer Tools

• A new JavaScript IDE, called JSDT, provide the same level of support for JavaScript as the JDT provides for Java. Some of the new features include code completion, quick fix, formatting, and validation.
• BIRT now provides an improved JavaScript editor and a new JavaScript debugger for debugging report event handlers. In addition cross tables have been improved to support multiple measures, displaying measure values and totals as text or as charts, added support for cross table scripting, and better filtering options.
• DTP has added a new graphical SQL query editor, called the SQL Query Builder, and improved usability of connection profile creation and management for users and adopters/extenders.
• WTP has improved UI support for Java EE 5: new wizards for Servlet Filters, Application Lifecycle Listeners, Session Beans, Message-Driven Beans; meta-data descriptor trees in the Project Explorer; Bundled Libraries support for EAR projects.
• Dali Java Persistence Tools has an expanded UI including a new Persistence.xml editor, new Entity and XML Mapping File wizards, and JPA specific contributions to the Project Explorer. Dali has also improved configuration and validation with support for mapping with annotations, XML, or with a combination of annotations and XML.

Support for SOA

• New SCA Designer provides a graphical interface for developers who wish to create composite applications using the SCA 1.0 standard.

• The Policy Editor is a collection of editors and validators that makes it easy for developers to construct and manipulate XML expressions that conform to the WS-Policy W3C standard.

• The BPMN Editor continues to go from strength to strength and is now a mature and reliable framework that allows consumers to construct and extend the BPMN 1.1 standard notation to illustrate business processes.

Availability

The projects in the Ganymede release are now available for download. Seven Eclipse Packages have been created to make it easier for developers to download multiple projects based on their role.

Supporting Quotes

'Once again the Eclipse community has delivered our annual release train and continues to deliver innovative software in a predictable manner', said Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation. 'New features like the Equinox p2 provisioning system, new modeling tools and tools that support SOA developers will be popular features for Eclipse users.'