SAN FRANCISCO—Sun Microsystems Inc. continued to make good on the its leaders' pledge to focus on developers by announcing an early access program for its developer tools.

Sun announced at JavaOne here an early access program for the next version of its simplified Java development tool, Java Studio Creator 2.

Tor Norbye, a Sun senior staff engineer, demonstrated Version 2 of Java Studio Creator, which has been rearchitected and is based on NetBeans 4.1, Norbye said. Indeed, Norbye said one of the highlights of Java Studio Creator 2 is its support for AJAX-enabled components to make Web development easier. "The AJAX component is off of java.net, and people can access Java Studio Creator 2 now."

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In addition, Java Studio Creator 2 features an expanded library of JavaServer Faces (JSF) components, support for visual development of Java portlets and support for Enterprise JavaBeans.

Meanwhile, Sun also previewed the next version of Sun Java Studio Enterprise, which features tools to build services, orchestration and data mapping as a path toward delivering service-oriented architectures (SOAs). Java Studio Enterprise 8 will enter early access availability later this summer.

This article was originally published on eWEEK.com.