What are the features or functionality which is present in Rational Application Developer and not in Eclipse? Why is Rational Application Developer needed?
Rational Application Developer vs Eclipse
By default Eclipse is only Java development environment not Java EE, so to develop for Java EE you need Eclipse bundle for Java EE developers. RAD is based on that, plus has many other features more strictly related to developing and deploying applications to various WebSphere products.
Here is short list with additional features in RAD (it is not complete list and might change in detailed comparison between specific RAD and Eclipse for Java EE versions):
- Programming support extensions
- Enhanced JSF tooling
- SCA, SIP, OSGi, WebSphere Batch tooling
- Portlet and Portal theme tooling
- JCA wizards (creating custom JCA adapters)
- Jython editor for creating WebSphere wsadmin scripts
- Modeling and analysis extensions
- UML visualizations
- Code coverage tools
- Static code analysis
- Some extensions in profiling tools
- Deployment extensions - provided testing environments and server tools for:
- WebSphere Application Server 7.0, 8.0, 8.5.5
- WebSphere Liberty - new lightweight runtime
- WebSphere Portal
- Tools to support deployment to Bluemix
You can see whats new here - RAD 9.1 new features and enhancements
If you plan to buy WebSphere Application Server, you might be interested in the Tools Edition license, where in addition to server licenses you get unlimited number of RAD licenses for development for that runtime.
UPDATE
If you just need server support in Eclipse there is WebSphere Developer tools plugin for Eclipse, freely available via Eclipse Marketplace, which supports WAS 8, 8.5, 9 and WebSphere Liberty.
Eclipse doesn't have a server built-in to run the web app on. RAD is Eclipse + some more features.
RAD is a commercial Eclipse-based IDE, developed by IBM. At a very high level, in RAD, WebSphere comes bundled and you can deploy your web application on the WebSphere server itself. If you are working on an application which is actually deployed on IBM WebSphere server (in production), you can use RAD to avoid surprises which might occur post deployment.
However, deployment on WebSphere in RAD is a time and resource consuming process.
If you want to check free alternatives, you can use Eclipse and a Tomcat server.
You could read more about RAD on the Wikipedia link and also on IBM website.
Long answer short. If you have Websphere server in your enterprise you are better off using RAD but if you don't then just use Eclipse. The additional tooling in RAD over Eclipse is primarily for IBM product (WAS, Blumix, WID, ..) support.
(I have been working with Eclipse ever since its inception, back in the happy WSAD days)
- The more IBM products you use — the likelier you are to get any benefit by using RAD.
- If your usage of IBM products is restricted to WebSphere Application Server, then don't bother. The JavaEE spec is mature enough and Eclipse's WST / JST do a very good job.
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