IBM® Rational® XDEtm is a graphical component modeling and development tool that uses the industry-standard Unified Modeling Language (UML). The following tool mentors cover both the Rational XDE Developer - Java Platform Edition and Rational XDE Developer - Microsoft .NET Edition.  Where there are differences between the two platforms, they are pointed out.

Overview

Rational XDE Developer - Java Platform Edition, combines your design and Java development into a tightly integrated environment. This single environment avoids the need to switch between tools outside of that environment.

Rational XDE improves the manner in which you work in many ways. For example, it allows you to:

• Move from analysis and design all the way to code within the same environment.
• Specify manual or automatic synchronization between your model and your code.
• Define both code templates and model templates to save time and help enforce standards.
• Create both UML and freeform models and validate models for UML compliance.
• Build multiple models within the same project that can be traced to one another.
• Reuse defined patterns to share code across your team.

Rational XDE Developer - Java Platform Edition can be used with either of the following Websphere Studio platform products:

• IBM Websphere Studio Workbench (WSW)
• IBM Websphere Studio Application Developer (WSSAD) - similar to WSW but includes additional features for Java (TM) 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and Web services development.

Both are tool integration and development environments composed of perspectives, views, editors, menus, and other building blocks for the Rational XDE environment. Typically, you use several perspectives:

• The Java perspectives contain Java editors, class viewers, and several other editors.
• The Modeling perspective contains the Model Explorer, Toolbox, and other views.

Rational XDE performs almost exactly the same in both product environments. Some minor differences are noted in the tool mentors.