Borland delivers enhanced visual design, modelling capabilities with latest release of Borland Together for Eclipse

Borland Software Corporation, the global leader for software delivery optimisation, today announced a significant upgrade to its Together 2006 for Eclipse enterprise modelling product.

With new capabilities supporting architects, Java and C++ developers, Unified Modelling Language (UML) designers, business process analysts and data modellers, the release enables users across the software delivery lifecycle to build and maintain high-quality software systems as well as optimise business processes through enhanced visual design.

Together 2006 for Eclipse Release 2 is based on the open source Eclipse 3.2 framework for software development, working directly within the Eclipse 3.2 shell. It supports a multitude of open industry standards and languages - including added support for modelling C++ applications - to promote extensibility and customisation especially when working in heterogeneous environments. Additionally, the release is integrated with Borland`s recently introduced Caliber DefineIT requirements definition product, enabling users to quickly build systems from requirements by creating UML and Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) models.

"Providing advanced, easy-to-use UML modelling capabilities for model-driven development continues to be a key area of expertise for Borland, but our visual design capabilities have evolved to be even more than that," said David Hauck, director of product marketing, Borland. "Not only does Together support a number of common visual languages and standards to help improve communication across functional teams, it also brings the benefits of visual design to other areas of the application lifecycle like requirements definition. This is an easy way to simplify collaboration and drive productivity across IT roles and business stakeholders."

"To maximise the success of reuse programs, IT organisations are increasingly coordinating different models of the various architectures across the enterprise, [which] is fuelling the integration and convergence of the markets for business process analysis (BPA), UML, and database design modelling methods and tools," said Michael J Blechar, Research VP, Gartner, in a recent report[1].

"This gradual convergence of the methods and tools used by technical architects, business modellers, developers and database designers will enable enterprises to better leverage their staffs` interrelated and complementary expertise."

Together 2006 plays a key role in Borland`s Requirements Definition and Management solution, which provides business analysts with a visual way to define and storyboard business and technical requirements. The integration between Together 2006 and Borland`s Requirements Definition and Management products enable users to generate UML diagrams from specified requirements and then leverage these design assets to drive software implementation and track design decisions back to the original requirements. By providing a process for visualising requirements through use case, activity and sequence diagrams, development teams can quickly transform specified requirements into high-level system architectures and designs without the risk of ambiguity.

"We use Together to help us understand our existing code base and augment it as new requirements and features are designed," said Paul Hudgins, application architect at Ciena - a leading network specialist and long-time Together customer. "Driving system design through models is key for us, especially as new customer requirements arise, as is leveraging Together to facilitate tighter communication between our distributed development teams. New features in this release can help companies more completely leverage models across the lifecycle, which can ultimately drive greater business value in finished applications."

In addition, this release adds complete C++ modelling support, allowing organisations to leverage the object-oriented C++ language for system development. To increase developer productivity, Together 2006 provides C++ LiveSource to help keep models and code synchronised at all times, as well as C++ design patterns and source code metrics.

Other key capabilities of Together 2006 for Eclipse Release 2 include the following:

* Expanded productivity for business analysts - Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) support enables analysts to visually model business processes and workflows, which can then be traced to requirements and used throughout the lifecycle.
* Advanced MDA capabilities - Complete Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) support aids architects in the definition and transformation of architectures from UML-based platform-independent models, which can target multiple platforms, to platform-specific models, such as for the such as for the Microsoft .NET or J2EE platforms.
* SOA manageability - The complex topology of services-oriented architectures (SOA) is made easier to manage with Together`s UML-based view of the entire system. Architects and designers can use Together to assess how new services will affect the existing architecture and how required changes can be implemented.
* Model and Code Quality Assurance - Both code- and model-level audits and metrics can give teams significant productivity gains by assisting with architectural compliance, code compliance, code complexity and coding standards.

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In order to optimise standards-compliance and interoperability benefits for customers, Borland will continue to invest in and leverage technology developed through the Eclipse Modelling Project for future releases of Together. The project, which promotes and develops model-based technologies within the Eclipse community, is being co-led by Borland and IBM.

"The role that Borland is taking to drive modelling advancements within Eclipse will not only benefit the larger community, but also allows us to create a highly advanced, standardised foundation upon which to build our commercial products," said Richard Gronback, co-leader of the Eclipse Modeling Project and chief scientist at Borland. "We expect our use of Eclipse modeling technologies to give customers a greater degree of flexibility, usability and richness without the risk of a proprietary platform."

For more information on Borland Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) products including Together, please go to http://www.borland.com/us/products/alm/index.html.