Visual Cafe
Encyclopedia
Visual Café was an integrated development environment
for the Java programming language
. 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
and RMI debugging. Visual Cafe itself was not written in Java.
Visual Café was spun off by Symantec
as the flagship of a new company, WebGain
. WebGain acquired several other technologies, including TopLink
, 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
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
.
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
's 1997 "Product of the Year" award.
), NetBeans
(known briefly as Forté for Java) and JBuilder
.
Integrated development environment
An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...
for the Java programming language
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
. It included a GUI
Graphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
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
Common Object Request Broker Architecture
The Common Object Request Broker Architecture is a standard defined by the Object Management Group that enables software components written in multiple computer languages and running on multiple computers to work together .- Overview:CORBA enables separate pieces of software written in different...
and RMI debugging. Visual Cafe itself was not written in Java.
Visual Café was spun off by Symantec
Symantec
Symantec Corporation is the largest maker of security software for computers. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and is a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500 stock market index.-History:...
as the flagship of a new company, WebGain
WebGain
WebGain was a jointly funded venture between Warburg Pincus and BEA Systems. The objective of the company was to acquire existing Java EE /Java programming language development tools and roll them together into a single application development environment: WebGain studio. A number of challenges,...
. WebGain acquired several other technologies, including TopLink
TopLink
In computing, TopLink is an object-relational mapping package for Java developers. It provides a framework for storing Java objects in a relational database or for converting Java objects to XML documents....
, before ceasing operations in 2002. While TopLink found a home at Oracle
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
, Visual Café is no longer commercially available.
WebGain purchased TogetherSoft's product Together
Borland Together
Together is a product line from Borland that integrates a Java IDE, which originally had its roots in JBuilder with a UML modeling tool.The product line used to come in various levels of functionality, called Together Developer, Together Designer, and Together Architect, however, since 2007, they...
Control Center (Together Studio) to integrate into Visual Café, but soon after the purchase was complete, Borland
Borland
Borland Software Corporation is a software company first headquartered in Scotts Valley, California, Cupertino, California and finally Austin, Texas. It is now a Micro Focus subsidiary. It was founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad and Philippe Kahn.-The 1980s:...
purchased WebGain's products Visual Café and Together Control Center. These products can now be found in JBuilder
JBuilder
JBuilder is an integrated development environment for the programming language Java, from Borland, and then CodeGear. Codegear was purchased by Embarcadero Technologies in 2008....
.
Mansour Safai
Mansour Safai
Mansour Safai, * Tehran, Iran, was a software engineer and computer scientist. Mansour Safai attended the French Lycée Razi in Tehran until age of 11, when he transferred to Lycée d’Estienne d’Orves, where he graduated with Scientific Baccalaureate with honors in Nice, France 1980...
, 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
InfoWorld is an information technology online media and events business operating under the umbrella of InfoWorld Media Group, a division of IDG...
'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 EclipseEclipse (software)
Eclipse is a multi-language software development environment comprising an integrated development environment and an extensible plug-in system...
), NetBeans
NetBeans
NetBeans refers to both a platform framework for Java desktop applications, and an integrated development environment for developing with Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Groovy, C, C++, Scala, Clojure, and others...
(known briefly as Forté for Java) and JBuilder
JBuilder
JBuilder is an integrated development environment for the programming language Java, from Borland, and then CodeGear. Codegear was purchased by Embarcadero Technologies in 2008....
.