Introduction to the Rational IDE V9

Our team of engineers is working to develop the next version of our integrated development environment (IDE). In April 2013, we announced the new 9th edition of the IDE at the IBM Impact Conference held in Las Vegas. They will be available from June 14 onwards and will continue to be released by July. In addition to the problems associated with new features, we are often asked about some of the basic questions about why Rational will persevere in developing the IDE. So this article provides some insights on how to answer these questions.

The important significance of the IBM Rational IDE

Today's companies are asking for more results from their software and system developers. These developers are tending to work incrementally to maximize the amount of resources they have at their disposal without sacrificing quality. A popular example is that developers are creating attractive mobile applications and bundling them with back-end systems while using the Scrum project management approach or one of the other agile processes.

To build these multi-tier solutions, developers are constantly encountering skill problems and working to overcome skill gaps to implement integrated applications. Previously, they might have used their favorite programming languages, tools, and platforms instead of waiting for another team (involved in another program) to take the time to do the necessary changes.

If you realize that the desire to quickly create and deploy a good idea can give many developers a powerful incentive, you'll understand that. In addition, because software is becoming the core of business innovation, people who build software are doing their best to realize the freedom of software creation. They also want to increase the use of powerful, repeatable tools and processes to keep innovation moving in the right direction.

But as business and software innovations begin to overlap more fully, when uncoordinated, individual capabilities lead to fragmented architectures and so-called "narrow horizons", there is a serious risk that some people will not be able to see the full picture (for example, failure to explain disaster recovery, regulatory audits, or reasons for infrastructure maintenance).

One of the purposes of providing tools for developers is to help them elevate this individual excellence to the entire organizational level. We want the development team to really start learning and creating applications based on the resources they already have. Looking at working developers, you'll find that they spend a lot of time using the IDE to analyze application code and edit code, and then validate those edits. Every improvement that the IDE brings to the developer's work can quickly grow to have a significant impact on the person, the team, and the organization as a whole.

From an upgrade perspective, the IBM Rational IDE provides two levels of improvement to help these developers in every moment, both evolutionary and revolutionary.

Evolutionary improvements

Our Ides are evolving to match the servers and systems available to our customers. For example, have we upgraded support for Java, HTML, COBOL, or upgraded IBM WebSphere? Application Server, Java Enterprise Edition (JEE), IBM CICS? Supported versions, as well as Linux, Microsoft Windows, and so on. By catching up with the environment and requirements that developers need, you can allow developers to work in a familiar, productive way. IDE Evolution does not stop here. We are still working to accelerate the development of the IDE and help them run efficiently under various conditions. For example, we have enhanced context-sensitive completion recommendations to provide more relevant and concise options.

A revolutionary improvement

We've added some new use cases for debugging, some new use cases for creating new artifacts and applying to new devices such as smartphones and tablets. We embed intelligence into the IDE, helping developers write fast, efficient code to identify less efficient code. For developers who first use a new language (perhaps JavaScript, COBOL, JCL, or RPG), we provide useful help to guide them through the code base to help them write changes to the pragmatic and stylistic guidelines that meet the proper form of code. This is a powerful aspect of our IDE: Every day, developers around the world connect new ideas with valuable, trustworthy backend services. All of this is done in a "dedicated" cohesive environment to help developers complete their work and enhance their personal expertise.

Co-development

Another point worth mentioning is that our Ides are tailored to achieve collaborative development between teams and team members. Whether you want to continuously integrate the work of another development team, send a new build to the QA team, or use an on-demand, cloud-based development environment that your operations team has provided, you will be helped in our IDE. They will help you achieve these goals while still keeping an eye on your creative development efforts.

The new Rational IDE product overview

We have changed some of the product names. The following is a list of new product names:

IBM Rational application Developer for WebSphere Software, Version 9.0

IBM Rational Developer for System Z, Version 9.0

IBM Rational Developer for I, Version 9.0

IBM Rational Developer for AIX and Linux, Version 9.0

IBM Rational Business Developer, Version 9.0

IBM Rational Developer for the Enterprise, Version 9.0

A description of the name:

IBM Rational Developer for I and IBM Rational Developer for AIX and Linux were previously used as various IBM rational Developer for power Systems S Oftware? or IBM Rational Developer for the I for SOA construction. The new name is clearer and more descriptive, because the purpose of the IDE is more closely associated with the operating systems, languages, and middleware that they support than the hardware architecture. These new names are used to make it easier for developers to know what resources they are getting when they complete each new project.

Not long ago, we provided IBM Rational Developer for Zenterprise. The product has been renamed the IBM Rational Developer for the Enterprise, which has a wider range of applications. With this new product, you can work across more platforms and operating systems to build your multi-tier applications.