What is RAP?
- The RAP project enables developers to build rich, Ajax-enabled Web applications by using the Eclipse development model, plug-ins with the well known Eclipse workbench extension points and a widget toolkit with SWT API (plus JFace).
- Version 1.0 has been released The RAP project has graduated from incubation and released version 1.0 of RAP. You can download the RAP tools / runtime from the download section on the left. A user guide is part of the RAP tools and can also be accessed online from the infocenter link.
RAP Architecture
RAP is very similar to Eclipse RCP, but instead of being executed on a desktop computer RAP is run on a server and clients can access the application with standard browsers. This is mainly achieved by providing a special implementation of SWT (a subset of SWT API).
Tooling for RAP
RAP takes advantage of the award winning Java Development tools and the Plug-in Development tools provided by Eclipse.org. As applications are developed as bundles (plug-ins) and entirely in Java everything from development to launching, debugging and exporting to standard .war files works right out of the Eclipse IDE.