Developing systems in C/C++ and Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE) is becoming increasingly more complex. At the same time, developers are expected to deliver capabilities faster and more reliably than ever. To better cope with these challenges, practitioners need more capable development tools. Modeling and other visualization technologies improve developer productivity and resulting software quality, especially when such features are integrated directly into the development environment.

The Eclipse open source platform provides the standards and supporting technology for providing the next generation of design and construction tools. Eclipse allows tool vendors to seamlessly integrate modeling, code visualization, and code construction features into one product package. And since it is open source, building on Eclipse offers developers more flexibility for customizations and extensions than they get with traditional tools built on proprietary platforms.

IBM Rational Systems Developer is an integrated design and construction product built on top of Eclipse. It extends all of Eclipse's power to enable software architects and developers to create well-architected, model-driven C/C++ and J2SE applications.