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IBM has launched its IBM Workplace Designer 2.5, aimed at letting customers extend roles-based document-oriented composite applications.

The Eclipse-based development tool is meant to help developers easily build components to use in composite applications running in the IBM Workplace environment.

IBM says that the tool also lets customers take advantage of the cost-effectiveness and flexibility of an underlying services-oriented architecture (SOA). IBM explains in a press release,

A composite application brings together disparate applications to initiate new business practices without having to start from scratch. Based on SOA, composite applications are quickly assembled from reusable components, and allow organizations to efficiently adapt software to changing requirements. Composite applications enable customers to re-use data to create new processes for partners, suppliers, customers, or employees during time-critical situations such as mergers and acquisitions or new product rollouts.

The tool is built on XML and Javascript and allows the importing of forms from existing IBM Lotus Domino applications.

"IBM Workplace Designer provides us with a framework for development, a familiar IDE, and support for languages (Javascript, XML, HTML) that we already use on a daily basis for Web development," said developers Rob Novak, President of IBM partner SNAPPS. "It lets us take the skills we've developed over the years and instantly put them to work with IBM Workplace applications."

"If you look at the world of IBM Web developers out there, it's pretty compartmentalized," he added. "Imagine IBM WebSphere Portal developers in one room, and Lotus Domino developers in another. IBM Workplace Designer doesn't just unlock the door between them, it kicks it down."

IBM Workplace Designer 2.5 is selling at a suggested retail price of $649. The beta version was released back in June to over 2,000 developers.

Chris is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.