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

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

for the

Java programming language Java is a high-level, general-purpose, memory-safe, object-oriented programming language. It is intended to let programmers ''write once, run anywhere'' ( WORA), meaning that compiled Java code can run on all platforms that support Jav ...

. It included a GUI 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 sy ...

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 An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Descript ...

, 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 Borland Software Corporation was a computing technology company founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad, and Philippe Kahn. Its main business was developing and selling software development and software deployment products. B ...

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 Embarcade ...

. 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'' (''IW'') is an American 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 is International Data Group, and its sister pu ...

'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 An eclipse is an astronomical event which occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ...

), Asymetrix' (the first Java machine code compiler),

NetBeans NetBeans is an integrated development environment (IDE) for Java (programming language), Java. NetBeans allows applications to be developed from a set of modular software components called ''modules''. NetBeans runs on Microsoft Windows, Windows, ...

(known briefly as Forté for Java),

, PowerSoft's PowerJ and Mojo Enterprise.

References

External links

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