Nexaweb announced the availability of the latest version of Nexaweb Studio. Nexaweb Studio 3.0 is an Eclipse-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that offers enterprise Web developers, AJAX, J2EE/Java developers and software engineers a standards-based, visual design environment for creating EW2.0 applications.

Nexaweb Studio 3.0 works in conjunction with the Nexaweb Platform (Version 4.5 was also announced today, see separate release) to ease EW2.0 application development and deployment through a rich, drag-and-drop design environment. With Version 3.0, developers now have AJAX UI capabilities through plug-ins to the Eclipse AJAX Toolkit Framework (ATF) and Web Standard Tools (WST) projects. Nexaweb Studio 3.0 supports Dojo controls, as well as various other third-party Java and AJAX widget libraries.

For improved integration with backend data sources and services, Nexaweb Studio 3.0 offers a plug-in to the Eclipse Data Tools Platform (DTP) project. Eclipse DTP includes extensible frameworks and exemplary tools that enable a diverse set of plug-in offerings to data-centric technologies. The supported data-centric technologies include database frameworks, relational database tools, and more.

Nexaweb Studio 3.0's support for Eclipse ATF, WST and DTP provides a declarative data binding framework for three-tier (presentation, business and data logic) development and server publication of corresponding system components, including SOAP, SQL and Web service applications.

"Our goal in submitting ATF as an open-source project to Eclipse Foundation was to provide an open framework upon which community members can innovate to help advance the adoption of AJAX," said Rod Smith, vice president of emerging technologies at IBM. "We're pleased to see Nexaweb's product release on top of Eclipse ATF. Its visual AJAX  development extension to ATF further simplifies the development and maintenance of AJAX applications. Such community innovation is a strong testimony to the technical strength of ATF as well as the power of open source."

"The richness and responsiveness of consumer AJAX applications has kicked off intense interest among Enterprise CIOs, architects and developers," said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. "Everyone recognizes the benefits of a richer, thinner, and faster application. Our goal with the Eclipse AJAX Toolkit Framework project is to provide a standardized framework which developers and platform providers alike can use to build complementary solutions that ease AJAX application development and deployment. Nexaweb's decision to leverage Eclipse ATF as part of their Studio 3.0 IDE is evidence of the industry's interest in the ATF project and the community growing around it."