Visual Café (formally Visual Café for Java) is a discontinued

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools ...

for the

Java programming language Java is a high-level, class-based, object-oriented programming language that is designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. It is a general-purpose programming language intended to let programmers ''write once, run anywh ...

. It included a

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

builder and was marketed as a series of editions: "Standard Edition," "Enterprise Suite," "Expert Edition," "Professional Edition," and "Development Edition." The "Enterprise Suite" was notable for supporting distributed

CORBA The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a standard defined by the Object Management Group (OMG) designed to facilitate the communication of systems that are deployed on diverse platforms. CORBA enables collaboration between s ...

and RMI debugging. Visual Cafe itself was not written in Java. Visual Café was spun off by Symantec, being purchased by BEA Systems and sold as the development environment to an early WebLogic Server. The freeware tools environment (Eclipse) limited the commercial viability of the development tool market, and Visual Cafe' became the flagship product of a new BEA spinoff company focused on development tools called WebGain. WebGain acquired several other technologies, including

TopLink Oracle TopLink is a mapping and persistence framework for Java developers. TopLink is produced by Oracle and is a part of Oracle's OracleAS, WebLogic, and OC4J servers. It is an object-persistence and object-transformation framework. TopLink p ...

, before ceasing operations in 2002. While TopLink found a home at Oracle, Visual Café is no longer commercially available. WebGain purchased TogetherSoft's product

Together ''ToGetHer'' (, aka Superstar Express) is a 2009 Taiwanese drama starring Jiro Wang of Fahrenheit, Rainie Yang and George Hu. It was produced by Comic International Productions ( 可米國際影視事業股份有限公司) and directed by Linzi ...

Control Center (Together Studio) to integrate into Visual Café, but soon after the purchase was complete, Borland purchased WebGain's products Visual Café and Together Control Center. These products can now be found in

JBuilder JBuilder is a discontinued integrated development environment (IDE) for the programming language Java from Embarcadero Technologies. Originally developed by Borland, JBuilder was spun off with CodeGear which was eventually purchased by Embarcader ...

. Mansour Safai, Vice President of the Language and Internet Tools Division of Symantec recognized the significance of the Java language early on, and was the first to offer integrated Java development tools in the pioneering Café product line, which evolved to the market leading product Visual Café. Visual Café was considered an early leader in Java IDE's. The product was well received. It won

InfoWorld ''InfoWorld'' (abbreviated IW) is an information technology media business. Founded in 1978, it began as a monthly magazine. In 2007, it transitioned to a web-only publication. Its parent company today is International Data Group, and its siste ...

's 1997 "Product of the Year" award.

Competing IDEs

Other IDEs that existed at the same time were Visual Age for Java (the spiritual predecessor to Eclipse),

Asymetrix SumTotal Systems, Inc. is a software company based in Gainesville, Florida that provides human resource management software and services to private and public sector organizations. The company uses multiple cloud-based channels, including softw ...

' (the first Java machine code compiler),

NetBeans NetBeans is an integrated development environment (IDE) for Java. NetBeans allows applications to be developed from a set of modular software components called ''modules''. NetBeans runs on Windows, macOS, Linux and Solaris. In addition to Java ...

(known briefly as Forté for Java),

, PowerSoft's PowerJ and Mojo Enterprise.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Visual Cafe Integrated development environments Java development tools