At the same time, it is also announcing continuation of its separate Eclipse tools strategy, putting the database and middleware provider on a path of supporting two separate development tools.

Previously, Oracle JDeveloper 10g was only available as a free trial download, much like most other development tools. With the new announcement, Oracle claims that the package offers the broadest functionality of any free tool.

Besides the core IDE, JDeveloper 10g also provides UML modeling, BPEL process design, and Java portlet development.

And with JBoss, Oracle is the only other vendor to provide a preview version of EJB 3.0 (Enterprise Java Beans), a simplified version of enterprise beans, that is still being finalized by the Java community Process (JCP).

Additionally, Oracle announced that it is proposing a new Java Server Faces (JSF) project in Eclipse, following up its current EJB 3.0 object-relational tooling effort (contributing its own TopLink mapper) that it is already leading with the open source Java tooling group.

Additionally, Oracle is joining the Apache MyFaces project (for designing open source tools supporting JSF) as a core contributor, claiming they are the only vendor supporting JSF with tooling, components, open source product, and a run time edition.

Java Server Faces provides a simplified way of designing user interfaces using the J2EE framework.

Oracle denies that offering JDeveloper for free in conjunction with ramped up Eclipse activity signifies an intention to phase out JDeveloper or migrate it to Eclipse.

This is not a strategic shift away from JDeveloper, said Rick Schultz, vice president of Oracle Fusion Middleware. Characterizing the moves as part of our increased commitment to JDeveloper, he said that the ulterior motive is driving customers to Oracle Fusion middleware platform, regardless of what tooling it comes through.

Clearly, by making new features such as the BPEL process designer available both for JDeveloper and as an Eclipse plug-in, Oracle is obviously on the path to building a full Eclipse-based tools offering. But that means in the long run, Oracle will end up supporting two parallel Java tools product lines.

That’s quite different from rival Borland’s Eclipse strategy, a company that also has an arguably larger legacy Java developer base to contend with, and therefore more at stake. While Borland’s core business is tools, for Oracle, they play a supporting role in promoting databases, applications, and middleware.

While Oracle is standing pat on JDeveloper, Borland has announced its intention to migrate its established JBuilder line to Eclipse over an unspecified period.