Every IDE will allow you to manage files and build projects. Eclipse goes beyond that by dealing with the code you are writing on a more intimate level than the typical file-centric view embraced by most IDEs. As a developer, you can use that familiarity to your advantage by letting Eclipse do the drudgework of finding, changing, switching, moving, waiting, and just a little bit of writing.

Ricoh Company, Ltd., Tokyo, a leading provider of office equipment, has implemented BEA WebLogic Portal 8.1 for its customer relationship management (CRM) portal site in Japan called NetRICOH.

RadView's WebLOAD 7.1 has just completed the BEA Validation Program for BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1. The BEA Validation Program is open to all partners enrolled in the BEA Partner Program.

RadView Software Ltd. announced that its WebLoad 7.1 has completed the BEA Validation Program for WebLogic Platform 8.1. WebLoad 7.1 evaluates scalability characteristics and derives capacity estimates for applications performing under real-world conditions.

The world's largest manufacturer of printing inks has selected BEA to implement a SOA built on BEA's WebLogic.

BEA and Acucorp agreement is designed to extend legacy applications using a combination of SOA and WebLogic.

BEA WebLogic Server 8.1 has set new performance records, topping previous results in the dual-node performance category using the industry- standard SPECjAppServer2002 benchmark.

BEA is planning new products to let businesspeople modify systems themselves, without having traditionally required coding skills.

Calling the announcement 'a huge milestone not only for BEA, but for the entire Java community as well,' BEA's EVP, Products confirmed yesterday that BEA is joining the Eclipse Foundation as a Strategic Developer and Board Member.

BEA has announced new Eclipse plug-ins for its JRockit JVM, as well as the merger of AspectWerkz into the existing AspectJ Eclipse Project. The plans, says the company, are designed to benefit both the BEA and Eclipse communities 'by helping to increase the flexibility of the Eclipse framework and supporting industry convergence around Eclipse as a single development platform in order to help make Java development easier.'

High Performance, one of the fastest-growing enterprise solution providers, has been authorized by BEA to resell its WebLogic Enterprise Platform.

Leading competitive response solutions company, Current Analysis, has appointed 'tier one' status to BEA, one of 16 companies that it looked at for its Enterprise Portal Market Assessment Report.

NetCracker Technology, said NetCracker 6.0 will be available for general release in March. This release is the most comprehensive OSS solution so far.

This year it looks certain that a new participation record will be set, as more than 4,000 votes have already been recorded in just the first seven days of voting, as more than 50,000 SYS-CON Media readers are estimated to cast their votes in this year's Readers' Choice Awards. Highlights after just one week's voting are as follows.

The following is an unedited transcript of an internal email exchange yesterday afternoon at SYS-CON Media offices. Disclaimer: We did not have any conversation with any of the hardware vendors regarding the selection of the hardware to install and use for the new 'SYS-CON.TV' and 'blog-n-play' Web sites. SYS-CON paid full price for the Dell hardware through Dell.com. Strukhoff did not know the online editor would publish his comment on the Web site.

BEA's CEO, Alfred Chuang, proclaimed yesterday: 'A new world order is emerging and the whole thing is running on a software platform.' The statement was made as BEA introduced new telecommunications services to help provide customers with a mix of voice, data, and wireless services.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced new industry-leading results with its Sun Fire UltraSPARC IV-based servers running SPECweb99_SSL for secure web-based applications and Linpack for high performance computing. This follows similar records for the Sun Fire midrange platform with key ISVs such as Siebel Systems, further demonstrating the ability to deliver optimized application performance and breakthrough price/performance through Sun's balanced system architecture. Since the launch of UltraSPARC IV-based system, Sun Fire servers have set 14 world records across a range of industry standard and ISV-specific benchmarks.

BEA has created a Web-based tool to help companies examine what SOA implementation will offer, when used with existing IT ecosystems.

eBay, The World's Online Marketplace, has more than 114 million registered users, 10,000 developers, and over 700 live, third-party applications.

On February 16th at Web Services Edge 2005 in Boston, Mass., Mr. Farquharson will present the topic: 'B2B Policy Enforcement: The Third Rail of SOA Implementation.' In this presentation he will discuss XML Virtual Private Networks (XML VPNs) and their potential to mitigate security policy enforcement issues in B2B SOA.

Sonic Software is the inventor and leading provider of the enterprise service bus (ESB). Sonic enterprise integration and messaging products deliver flexibility, scalability, and continuous availability through patent-pending innovations. Sonic Software enables over 700 customers to integrate their organizations from the department to the extended enterprise with a standards-based, service-oriented architecture (SOA).

SYS-CON Media, the world's leading i-technology media company, announced that its 2005 Readers' Choice Awards polls opened today, February 1, 2005, and will remain open for six months, until July 31, 2005. More than 50,000 readers are expected to cast their votes to select the best software products and services of the year for Java, Linux, Web Services, XML, Microsoft .NET, ColdFusion and Macromedia MX.

SAP America, Inc., the U.S. and Canadian subsidiary of SAP AG (NYSE: SAP), this week announced the addition of several key executives to its leadership team overseeing strategic market segments, geographic territories, vertical industries and service units. The new executives join SAP America upon the company's completion of nine consecutive quarters of significant revenue growth, market share gains and industry leading customer satisfaction.

In its search for the right chemistry, BEA, which has been rearranging its office furniture for a while now, has hired an executive out of Borland and two out of Sun to man key posts.

Pantero debuts the Expression Builder for creating sophisticated data interpretation and validation services without having to write code.

SYS-CON Media (www.sys-con.com), the world's leading i-technology media company, announced today that SYS-CON.TV (www.sys-con.tv), the first streaming live i-technology television is scheduled to debut on February 15, 2005 to coincide with the first day of the upcoming Web Services Edge 2005 East - International Web Services Conference Expo.

Webinar participants will learn why Biogen Idec anticipates enhanced business value by welcoming over 80,000 registrants and more than 2,000 new patients to multi-lingual sites. Also, attendees can ask Biogen Idec, BEA, and EMC-Documentum experts how technology from BEA and Documentum offers your company a standards-based solution for greater flexibility, reduced risk, and high performance across multiple applications.

The open source Expresso 5.6 release builds on a solid feature set with several new open source products integrated and representing over 1000 cvs commits of framework enhancements. Expresso's powerful, scalable architectural framework creates an approach to J2EE Java Web development that makes programming more management and fun.

SYS-CON Media (www.sys-con.com), the world's leading i-technology media company, announced today that the first branded blogging community, www.blog-n-play.com (TM), will go beta on February 15, 2005, to coincide with the opening day of the Web Services Edge 2005 East International Web Services Conference & Expo (www.sys-con.com/edg e2005east).

Is the Oracle/Peoplesoft battle stressing people out? Well, it's not helping, says a Bay Area stress management expert. 'People are having to live with the uncertainty of 'will I have a job tomorrow,' or on a larger scale, 'will the company be here tomorrow?',' says Lucy Yaldezian, who treats a variety of panic and anxiety disorders at an office not far from PeopleSoft's Pleasanton, Calif. headquarters. Yaldezian explains how all too often in Silicon Valley 'We're living in the emergency room,' instead of fear being an occasional response, it's a permanent state of mind.

Jonathan Schwartz in July delivered what must be a leading candidate or the title of 'i-technology quote of 2004' - but who has even better suggestions?

'As we enter the new year, you should expect 2005 to be one in which we place an ever heightening focus on our dialog with the community, and the developer community in particular,' writes Sun's president and COO, Jonathan Schwartz, in his first blog entry of the new year. 'One community with whom we've maintained a strong (nothing's ever perfect) dialog over the past few years is the Java developer community,' he adds. He describes it as 'vibrant and thriving.'

Four Moscow-based security experts with Kaspersky Labs have reported that the number of new entries to its malware database jumped by more than 30 in 2004 - with the two record holders for damage caused being Mydoom.a (February) and Sasser.a (May).

BEA's WebLogic Workshop 8.1 SP4 is to integrate ICEreader, the leading Java HTML rendering tool.

BEA announced it has broken a SPEC jAppServer2002 record measuring server speed.

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has selected the combination of BEA WebLogic Server and NEON's Shadow mainframe integration solution to support its forthcoming eBusiness Computing Infrastructure (eBCI) project.

BEA announced that a beta version of its next-generation WebLogic server, known as Diablo, is available for download, free. BEA is calling this its most significant WebLogic server release ever.

BEA has unveiled Diablo, its next-generation WebLogic Server 9.0, the cornerstone of its upcoming WebLogic Platform 9.0 designed to connect disparate systems and run the applications that large companies use to run their business.

One of the largest online uses of ebXML is by the Defense Department. DOD EMALL is also one of the most successful online commerce and messaging portals created by the US government. Utilizing WebLogic, the site's sales have jumped from $13.7 million in 2002 to $188 million today.

The PeopleSoft board today recommended to its shareholders that they give Oracle the cold shoulder and reject its $24 per share bid for the company, seriously undervaluing it - says PeopleSoft - at just $8.8BN. Larry Ellison issued a statement saying that the offer is good till midnight on November 19 - after which time, if a majority of shares have not been tendered, Oracle will move on to other prey and the would-be hostile takeover of PeopleSoft will pass into the annals of software business history.