SAP Contributes Development Tool to Eclipse

Published: October 23, 2007

by Alex Woodie

SAP is donating a programming tool that allows Java developers to make better use of memory in servers to the Eclipse community, the enterprise application powerhouse announced from its TechEd conference in Germany last week.

According to SAP, the new tool will allow Java developers to more easily analyze memory usage for applications created in the Eclipse development environment. By giving developers a graphical tool to analyze object retention patterns and determine how best to optimize memory usage in Java applications, they can decrease the need to restart their servers to clear the memory, thereby boosting the availability of the applications.

Previously, this capability was only available to SAP developers working within the company's NetWeaver environment. "We're pleased to see SAP continue to renew its commitment to the open source development community," said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation.

In other news, SAP announced that it recently joined the OSGi Alliance, a collection of software companies founded by IBM, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, and Ericsson in 1999. The OSGi Alliance is currently working on standards regarding the remote management of Java services and a framework for letting Java applications to act as services in a service oriented architecture (SOA).