The NetBeans project released its Enterprise Pack 5.5 beta plug-in for the open-source Java IDE, bundling advanced Web services, modeling, and XML authoring features, as well as out-of-box support for enterprise integration APIs.

In his interview with Artima, The Future of NetBeans, NetBeans evangelist Tim Boudreau noted that,

The NetBeans Enterprise Pack provides many additional features that were initially in Java Studio Enterprise. Java Studio Enterprise was Sun's commercial offering, bundling NetBeans with additional modules. We released that open-source as well, as part of our strategy of providing a more integrated developer experience, rather than having different IDEs.

The Enterprise Pack offers XML support on steroids, allowing you to refactor your XML, in addition to schema support and basic XML editing. UML support is another of important Enterprise Pack feature. And if you have a bunch of Web services and you need to make them all talk to each other, you can use NetBean's BPEL support to orchestrate that.

Other Enterprise Pack 5.5 features include support for the Liberty identity framework, WSDL and BPEL refactoring, as well as a modular installer that lets you install just the required features.

A few years ago, as the Java enterprise API started to swell in size and features, many developers feared that the resulting complexity would render Java a less effective tool for the majority of business solutions. Sun's reply to such developer worries was the new APIs were a necessary response to market demands, and that parallel evolution of tools and language features would ensure that Java remained a highly effective development platform.

NetBeans 5.5 with the Enterprise Pack—an over 80MB download—includes developer support for virtually every Java enterprise API. Along with language changes, such as the introduction of annotations, do you believe that Sun delivered on its promise to keep Java an effective development platform?

More generally, do you believe that tools, as well as language features, can keep a platform's use effective, even as the platform must grow in features and size to accommodate new market needs?