BEA Systems has announced the purchase of applications tools developer M7
It’s also part of a strategy to split up and reorganize and reposition WebLogic Workshop, which originated as a design and runtime environment. Earlier in the year, BEA contributed the runtime portion of Workshop to Apache as the Beehive project. The M7 acquisition bulks up and sets Workshop more firmly as a development tool.
M7 brings several additional bells and whistles to the party. It gets BEA a step closer to getting its tools onto Eclipse and extending open source support. And it adds several productivity features that simplify connecting with databases and debugging Java and web applications.
For starters, M7 is already Eclipse-based, a goal that Workshop will only be attain with the next release. It also adds support of Java Server Faces (JSF), a recent addition to J2EE that simplifies the painting of application screens.
The acquisition of M7 will also enable BEA to support open source frameworks, including Struts, which provides deployment descriptors, and Hibernate, which provides an object-relational mapping framework that is a simpler alternative to EJB entity beans. M7 provides workbenches for both.
And M7 makes it easier to isolate inconsistencies within Java and web applications. Its AppXRay feature explores internal interdependencies at the code and database mapping levels, which is useful for debugging Java applications. Its AppXaminer feature explores external dependencies at the file level, which is useful for editing and debugging web applications.
M7 also brings improved database connectivity features, including graphical tools to explore and map the schema of JDBC-compliant relational databases, modify or execute SQL commands with a SQL editor, and automatically generate object-relational mappings using the open source Hibernate framework. An application explorer function allows you to modify the entity relationships in Hibernate mappings.
While the capture of M7 provides BEA with an opportunity to combine the worlds of open source and commercial application deployment, the company is still expected to continue with its policy of acquisition in order to ignite growth.
