.NET News Desk

(June 18, 2002) - Rational Software has expanded its "Extended Development Experience" to architects and designers with the introduction of Rational® XDE™ Modeler and added more power for Java and .NET developers by enhancing Rational® XDE™ Professional and Rational® PurifyPlus, the first and only runtime analysis product to run inside the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET integrated development environment (IDE).

Rational's "Extended Development Experience" for developers provides a frictionless design and development environment by tightly integrating the Rational XDE product family into IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, empowering developers to work directly within their IDE. With this release, Rational integrates Rational XDE Modeler into these IDEs while integrating Rational SuiteTestStudio into the WebSphere Studio IDE and Rational PurifyPlus into the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET IDE.

Rational XDE Modeler - Most architects and designers use a variety of tools to represent their work, from pen and paper to whiteboards and basic drawing tools. While this may be effective when communicating to non-technical audiences, it lacks the semantics to effectively communicate with the rest of the development team. The translation from paper to code leaves information gaps.

Rational XDE Modeler solves this problem by enabling architects and designers to create and communicate designs in visual models that use the industry-standard Unified Modeling Language (UML) combined with free-form drawing. Developers using Rational XDE Professional can then use these models as the basis for their implementation. Because both Rational XDE Modeler and Rational XDE Professional run inside IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer, IBM WebSphere Workbench, and Microsoft Visual Studio.NET, they allow architects, designers, and developers to share a common user experience.

Enhancements to Rational XDE Professional - Rational provides more benefits for Java and .NET developers with the following enhancements:

• New data modeling capabilities enabling developers to create a visual design of tables, table spaces, and logical databases in one diagram.
• New Web publishing and reporting capabilities that allow developers, architects, and data modelers to share models with all stakeholders and generate reports, in HTML format, on model elements and diagrams.
• New "assisted modeling" capabilities for C# developers that help .NET developers realize the value of modeling, even with only a basic knowledge of the UML. This unique capability allows developers using Microsoft Visual C# .NET to build UML models using familiar C# "coding terms." Special wizards translate the C# terms into perfect UML models.

Rational PurifyPlus v2002 Release 2 is the first and only runtime analysis product to run inside Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, providing developers using Microsoft .NET with memory leak detection, code coverage, and performance analysis capabilities from inside their Microsoft Visual Studio .NET-based workspace. With both Rational PurifyPlus and Rational XDE Professional running within the same IDE, developers have the unique ability to access design, development and runtime analysis capabilities without leaving their development environment.

Additional information is available at www.rational.com.