The Eclipse Foundation will make available Monday Eclipse RAP (Rich Ajax Platform) 1.0, an AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) server for building and deploying rich Internet applications. Leveraging the Eclipse component model that based on the OSGi (Open Services Gateway initiative) standard, RAP 1.0 is suited for enterprises and enables development of component-based applications that can integrate with existing systems. RAP 1.0 is freely downloadable.
With RAP, developers can build AJAX applications "completely in Java," said Jochen Krause, project leader for RAP at Innoopract."The benefit is many developers know [how] to write Java code," he said. "If you look at enterprise IT, you find very few people that are seasoned in JavaScript."