Nov 7^th, 2005:  Introducing BEA Workshop Product Family: debut of BEA Workshop 3.0

 The BEA Workshop product family provides professional tools for the blended development of today’s service-oriented, enterprise applications.   Whether creating services at the presentation layer, middle tier, or back-end, products in BEA Workshop family have open technology to help you simply Java, SOA, J2EE, and Web applications.  By blending open source, standard and commercial software in our tools, BEA leverages the best of industry innovation to help you wrangle source code or visually design with sophisticated visual tools.

The BEA Workshop product family consists of our original BEA WebLogic Workshop 8.1 product as well as our newly acquired family members.

BEA WebLogic Workshop 8.1

BEA Workshop Studio 3.0

BEA Workshop JSP Editor 3.0

BEA Workshop for Struts 3.0

BEA Workshop for JSF 3.0

This product family is the future home of BEA Workshop for WebLogic Platform 9.2.0, which includes web service tools, Portal tools, Apache Beehive tools, XML tools, as well 8.1 upgrade tools.

The BEA Workshop products focus on SOA enablement.  BEA’s blended approach offers IT organizations and developers more choice and flexibility when creating SOA components (services) that require persistence mechanisms, and require use of open source frameworks, servers and tools.  The launch of the BEA Workshop Studio 3.0 is an important part of a three - part blended strategy:

• Tools
  •  Multiple platform support, no vendor lock-in
  • Professional Eclipse tools for Hibernate, JSF, Struts, Tiles, JSP
• Runtime
  •   EJB3/JDO support allows wider choice of persistence mechanisms
  • Technical Support for Tomcat runtime offered by BEA
•  Runtime Application Frameworks
  • Apache Beehive
  • Spring Framework

General Frequently Asked Questions

1.) Why did BEA acquire M7?

In a move designed to illustrate its determination to stay at the forefront of the developer tools market, BEA Systems has acquired M7, an Eclipse-based developer tools company based in Cupertino, Calif. The acquisition of M7 accelerates the delivery of BEA developer tools on the Eclipse Tools Framework and dovetails perfectly with BEA’s “blended” strategy for application development and deployment.

2.) Is BEA going to re-brand or repackage the existing tools?

Yes. They will be re-released on November 7th, with WebLogic Server 9.0 support, and called:

BEA Workshop™ Studio 3.0

BEA Workshop™ for Struts 3.0

BEA Workshop™ for JSF 3.0

BEA Workshop™ JSP Editor 3.0

These products will be part of the BEA Workshop™ Product family along with existing BEA development tools like BEA WebLogic Workshop® 8.1.

 3.) What capabilities does the BEA Workshop™ Studio 3.0 offer?

BEA Workshop™ Studio 3.0 Includes:

• Hibernate ORM Workbench
  •    Hibernate mapping, editing and integration
• BEA Workshop for JSF
  • WYSIWYG JSF development with support for JSF Ref Implementation, MyFaces, Custom Component Rendering & Editing Interface
•  BEA Workshop for Struts
  • Source/Visual editors for Struts
  • Includes Tiles & Validation Framework
• BEA Workshop JSP Editor
  • Source/Visual JSP Editor & Debugging, CSS & _JavaScript Editors, AppXray support
• AppXRay
  •   AppXRay is an application scanning & mapping technology that provides a high degree of intelligence throughout the environment.

3.) What are BEA’s plans for M7 and the NitroX Studio?

The M7 products, people and business are being merged with the existing tools group at BEA.  The BEA Workshop Studio 3.0 is available today at www.m7.com for  limited time, until the site fully transitions to http://www.bea.com. It currently supports development on WebLogic Server in addition to several other environments. With the acquisition of M7, BEA plans to merge its existing developer tools capabilities with M7’s and provide these new capabilities to the market.

4.) How does this affect BEA WebLogic Workshop?  Will there be two developer tool products, or one integrated product?

The two products will be grouped into a single family: BEA Workshop™.  The BEA Workshop product family will consist of several members:

BEA Workshop™ Studio 3.0

BEA Workshop™ for Struts 3.0

BEA Workshop™ for JSF 3.0

BEA Workshop™ JSP Editor 3.0

BEA WebLogic Workshop® 8.1

 .. as well as future members like the BEA Workshop™ for WebLogic Platform 9.2.0.

There will initially be two developer tool products, the BEA Workshop Studio 3.0 and the WebLogic Workshop 8.1 IDE.  BEA had previously announced that the next generation of the BEA WebLogic Workshop® 8.1 would be implemented on the Eclipse 3.1 platform.  BEA plans to use the common eclipse platform to merge the next generation (BEA WebLogic Workshop™ 9.2.0) for the development of Web Services, web applications, service-oriented applications, portals, and processes with the existing tools acquired from M7 (BEA Workshop™ Studio 3.0). The BEA Workshop™ Product Family will continue to provide a unified developer tooling environment for BEA’s entire product offerings in addition to providing an open and extensible platform based on the Eclipse Tools Framework for third-party and customer plug-ins.  Detailed plans will be available at a future date.

5.) What other acquisition targets did you consider? Why M7?

BEA is constantly surveying the market for possible acquisitions. We felt that M7 provided the best technology, personnel, and customers for our burgeoning BEA Workshop™ family of developer tools.

6.) Once the acquisition is complete will the Studio products continue to be focused on development for non-BEA platforms?

Yes.  The core mission of the original product line remains unchanged.

7.) What are the unique and differentiating features of BEA Workshop Studio?

Watch other vendors begin to copy our AppXRay, an application scanning & mapping technology that provides a high degree of intelligence throughout the environment:

• Understand impact of changes made by other team members
• Deep awareness of all web app layers including individual artifacts for JSP, JSF, Struts, Hibernate
• Visually map out logic flow and dependencies for predictive “what-if” change analysis, and general understanding of applications
• Dependency aware source editing and navigation

For developers, this means faster iterative development and debugging, reduced time spent troubleshooting in team environments and imported, pre-existing applications.

8.) Who are customers of BEA Workshop Studio 3.0?

Capital Bluecross, Utah Retirement Systems, Digital Cyclone, Drilling Info, Inc., FedEx Custom Critical, Dartmouth Medical are examples of current BEA customers.   For more Information, please visit www.m7.com.   BEA will continue to honor existing M7 customers and of course, honor their support contracts.

Frequently Asked Questions - Product

1.)  Can I activate my trial license without an internet connection or from behind a firewall?

• Once the installation is successful, Launch the tool from the start menu or script
• License dialog with instructions to activate on system with internet connection appears
• If you have internet connectivity, open a new browser (IE/Firefox) and goto https://devclub.m7.com/nitroxActivate.do
  • Copy-paste the "Activation Request" from Step 2 of License dialog into text area of the browser and Click Get Activation Code
• Note: In case your system does not have a internet connection, copy the "URL & Activation Request" in a file and obtain the "Activation Text" on any other system with an internet connection.
• From the browser, copy the "Activation Code" and paste in Step 3 of License dialog
• Click OK on License dialog to complete the trial activation

Check the bea.com site or dev2dev for complete installation instructions.

2.)  What are the system requirements and support platforms for BEA Workshop Studio?

·         Microsoft Windows 2000/XP or

·         Linux: Red Hat 9 or Fedora Core 2 (or later versions)

·         512MB of RAM

·         JRE 1.4.x or higher on Windows and 1.5 or higher on Linux

BEA Workshop Studio can plug in to the following environments:

·         Eclipse 3.x

·         IBM WSSD 5.1.x, WSAD 5.1.x, RAD 6.x, RWD 6.x

3.)  Which servers are currently supported for deployment and debugging?

·         Apache Jakarta Tomcat 5.0.x, 4.1.x and 4.0.x

·         BEA WebLogic Server 9.0, 8.1 and 7.0

·         Caucho Resin 3.0

·         IBM WebSphere 5.x

·         JBoss 4.0.x and 3.2.x

·         Mortbay Jetty 5.1.x

4.)  Which web technologies are supported by BEA Workshop Studio?

a.      J2EE 1.3 and 1.4

b.      JSP 1.2 and 2.0

c.      Struts 1.0-1.2

d.      JSF 1.1

e.      JSTL 1.0.6 and 1.1.2

f.       Hibernate 2.1.x and 3.0

5.)   Can BEA Workshop Studio work with existing web applications?

Yes, by pointing to an existing project directory or Eclipse project, AppXRay analyzes the entire project in order to understand the structure and dependency relationships. BEA Workshop Studio immediately points out inconsistencies between dependencies and gives full access to these relationships at design time. Many web-enabled IDE’s require some project reorganization in order to fully benefit from their features but BEA Workshop Studio is flexible enough that it will work with almost any existing project structure.

6.)  What are the debugging options for BEA Workshop Studio?

The BEA Workshop Studio debugger goes beyond the simple line mapping/stepping by providing the power to debug through the multiple layers that make up a web application. JSPs can be debugged directly, simply by setting a breakpoint and visually stepping over lines of code. BEA Workshop Studio and BEA Workshop JSP Editor provides a JSP variable view where you can see and set variables as they get created. BEA Workshop Studio can step into JSP tags and scriptlets allowing the debugger to traverse into the business logic layers.

7.)  How does BEA Workshop Studio work with _Javascript?

Currently, BEA Workshop Studio only provides syntax highlighting for _Javascript in an HTML or JPS file. BEA Workshop Studio does not provide code completion, validation, or debugging at the _Javascript level

8.)  Can BEA Workshop Studio integrate into source control systems?

Yes, because BEA Workshop Studio is built on the Eclipse environment it is able to leverage built in support for CVS source control and other source control plugins including Visual Source Safe and Clearcase. When code is checked out of source control, AppXRay scans and validates the new changes to ensure that consistency is maintained.

9.)  Does BEA Workshop Studio support ant?

Yes, ant scripts can be incorporated into the project build.

10.)                     Which implementations of JSF are covered by BEA Workshop Studio out of the box?

While any JSF component is supported, BEA Workshop Studio ships with the Sun Reference Implementation 1.1.1 and Apache MyFaces 1.0.9 implementations of JSF. All JSF components of the Sun RI and MyFaces are available for drag and drop, rendered properly in the BEA Workshop Studio WYSIWYG editors, and validated by AppXRay .

11.)                     How does BEA Workshop Studio work with custom tags?

BEA Workshop Studio has strong support for custom tags and components. When and application is first introduced into BEA Workshop Studio, AppXRay scans all of the web elements, such as the tlds, jsps, java classes, and configuration files. AppXRay takes this information and builds a database of dependencies and tracks the relationships between these files.

All component definitions, whether they are custom or standard components, appear in the Tag Libraries palette and are available for drag and drop development. At the source code level, BEA Workshop Studio validates proper component usage, syntax, and provides code completion for the tag, its attributes, and possible values. In addition, BEA Workshop Studio provides a graphical editor for tag library definition (TLD) files. The TLD editor organizes tags and their attributes in a form layout making management of current TLD's much more straightforward. It also provides wizards which take the user step by step through the creation of new content.

Finally, BEA Workshop Studio provides a simple xml-based mechanism to define the rendering of the custom tag for use within the BEA Workshop Studio WYSIWYG editors.

12.)                     How does BEA Workshop Studio work with Tiles?

BEA Workshop Studio provides the industry’s best support for Struts Tiles. BEA Workshop Studio provides visual and source level editing capabilities and a deep overall knowledge of the entire web application. Tiles support includes design time rendering of Tiles, Tiles configuration graphical editors, integrated Tiles and Struts editors, and consistency checking. Users

13.)                     Does BEA Workshop Studio support the Struts Validation Framework?

BEA Workshop Studio provides full support for the Struts Validation Framework. The implementation is fully integrated in the environment and aware of other layers of the environment.

14.)                     What types of Object Relational Mapping are available in BEA Workshop Studio?

There are a few techniques that developers use for object relation mapping and it is often determined by the phase of the project development cycle. BEA Workshop Studio ORM Workbench supports and bottom up/reverse engineering (schema to classes) and top down (object model to schema) development approaches.

15.)                     Which databases are supported by the ORM Workbench?

Any database that has a JDBC driver is supported by the BEA Workshop Studio ORM Workbench.

16.)                     How does BEA Workshop Studio approach new web application projects?

BEA Workshop Studio provides a New Application wizard to pre-configure a new web application. Users are prompted to select the technologies that will be used in the project (JSP/JSTL/Struts/JSF/Hibernate) and BEA Workshop Studio will create the appropriate project structure and all configuration files related to the selected technologies. The project structure is based on editable templates so that BEA Workshop Studio can easily conform to the desired project layout.

17.)                     Can BEA Workshop Studio provide assistance for web applications that use localization/internationalization?

Web applications that must provide localized versions of the site often take advantage of Struts or JSF resource bundles to manage content. BEA Workshop Studio fits well into this scenario because AppXRay scans all of the application artifacts and their dependencies, including the property files associated with the resource bundles. When the developer loads a JSP, the design editors render all of the content defined in these property files as if it was actually defined on the page and even based on the region selected. At the source level, BEA Workshop Studio provides code completion, navigation, and validation for all keys and values as defined in the resource bundle. 

Frequently Asked Questions – Sales/ Support Process

1.) Will BEA change the current product pricing?

While the packaging and branding have changed, the current pricing and support are unchanged at this time.  Additional pricing options may be added in the future for (eg. site licensing) but the existing model remains unchanged.

As part of the re-branding of the M7 product line BEA will consider enhancements to the existing programs that can increase the level of customer satisfaction with the product capabilities. 

2.) Do the terms of the trial download, the free JSP editor, or the activation process change as a result of the acquisition?

The process will remain the same.

3.) Will BEA change the current support pricing?

Bea will make a minor change in support pricing, to align with the new packaging.

The policy remains unchanged:
• An Incident Support Package includes 3 incidents
• 1 named contact per Incident Support Package
• An Incident Support Package is valid for 1 year from the time of purchase for an active product subscription

Previous Support Pricing

BEA Workshop Studio for JSP, $60
BEA Workshop Studio for Struts, $100
BEA Workshop Studio for JSF, $140

New Pricing

BEA Workshop for Struts, $140

BEA Workshop for JSF, $140
BEA Workshop Studio, $140

4.) How does the licensing scheme work?

BEA Workshop Studio is sold as a perpetual license.  Meaning, once you purchase the license, it is yours to keep.  In addition, for the first year all new versions all free.  (Any version upgrades, major or minor, as well as patches are free of charge).  After the first year, if you decide that you wish to continue receiving these upgrades, simply pay 50% of the listed price.

5.) Is BEA Workshop Studio a machine locked license?

The BEA Workshop Studio licensing scheme gives you the flexibility that you need.  BEA Workshop Studio allows you to have as many installations of the product as you wish.  It is at your discretion as to which machine you want it activated on.  For example, if you are at work, simply activate the license by going to the HELP menu.  If you decide that you want to work from home, simply deactivate the license and activate from home on your desktop/laptop.

6.) Is there a discount for volume purchases?

Yes, depending on how many licenses you purchase, you may be able to achieve a volume rate discount.