Abstract
This report presents an in-depth competitive analysis of nine of the most popular development tool suites along 18 independent features. Results are based on survey responses, collected in the first quarter of 2014 and provided by over 1,200 software developers spanning the globe. The various ratings were collected from only those respondents who specifically indicated familiarity with a given tool suite. Features were rated along a discrete four-point scale presented verbally as "very satisfied", "somewhat satisfied", "somewhat unsatisfied", or "very unsatisfied".
In addition, regardless of the tools they use, all respondents were asked to provide ratings of the importance of each of the 18 features. Based on these aggregate responses, a weighting factor was calculated for each feature. This weighting factor was used when deriving overall satisfaction scores for tools in order to prevent less important features from exerting undue influence on a tool's overall satisfaction rating. Finally, another way that direct comparisons are facilitated between tool suites is by presenting charts, when appropriate, along a standardized scale.
- Apple Xcode
- Eclipse
- Genuitec MyEclipse
- IBM Rational Tools
- Microsoft Visual Studio
- Oracle JDeveloper
- Red Hat JBoss Developer Studio
- SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio
- Zend Studio
- Ability to Integrate Tools
- Application Modeling Tools
- Availability of Third-Party Tools
- Debugging Tools
- DevOps Automation Tools
- Integration with Databases
- Quality of Technical Support
- Ready to Use Out of Box Experience
- Requirements Management
- Runtime Memory Analysis Tools
- Size/Quality of Developer Community
- Support for Collaboration
- Support for Data Mining and Analytics
- Support for Frameworks
- Support for Multiple Languages
- Support for Parallel Programming
- Visual Tools and Declarative Programming Support
- Web Design/Development Tools
