BEA open-sourcing Workshop

A little bird tells me that BEA officially said today what Darryl Taft reported a week ago–that BEA will open-source the framework for its Weblogic Workshop, under the project name “Beehive.”

Workshop is BEA’s effort to Visual-Basic-ize J2EE development. I saw a demo of it during Adam Bosworth’s introduction of Workshop at BEA’s eWorld conference a year ago (the event where I picked up my nifty Scott Dietzen bobble-head). It uses meta-data, like the “properties” box for VB controls, to configure objects within the framework. I thought it was a good idea, but the implementation left a little to be desired.

That, plus the demo was based on “Minority Report” — a Department of Precrime interceptor-routing application. A little too irony-free for my taste, thanks.

Anyway, open-sourcing Workshop’s framework should at least help them pick up some steam in terms of others building Workshop-ready J2EE objects. Or, at least, it might. Maybe. Possibly. Can I shove any more qualifiers on the end of this paragraph?

Or, it could be a sign that BEA is having trouble getting adoption, is tired of spending money on Workshop, and is foisting it off on a volunteer workforce to maintain. But they’d never do something that cynical. Maybe.

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BEA open-sourcing Workshop

A little bird tells me that BEA officially said today what Darryl Taft reported a week ago–that BEA will open-source the framework for its Weblogic Workshop, under the project name “Beehive.”

Workshop is BEA’s effort to Visual-Basic-ize J2EE development. I saw a demo of it during Adam Bosworth’s introduction of Workshop at BEA’s eWorld conference a year ago (the event where I picked up my nifty Scott Dietzen bobble-head). It uses meta-data, like the “properties” box for VB controls, to configure objects within the framework. I thought it was a good idea, but the implementation left a little to be desired.

That, plus the demo was based on “Minority Report” — a Department of Precrime interceptor-routing application. A little too irony-free for my taste, thanks.

Anyway, open-sourcing Workshop’s framework should at least help them pick up some steam in terms of others building Workshop-ready J2EE objects. Or, at least, it might. Maybe. Possibly. Can I shove any more qualifiers on the end of this paragraph?

Or, it could be a sign that BEA is having trouble getting adoption, is tired of spending money on Workshop, and is foisting it off on a volunteer workforce to maintain. But they’d never do something that cynical. Maybe.

Leave a Reply