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Technology Q&A



Q: What technologies are used in Workbench?
  Workbench is built on Mathematica and Eclipse. It makes heavy use of J/Link, the Mathematica toolkit that provides transparent communication between Mathematica and Java.
   
Q: What is Eclipse?
  Eclipse is a leading platform for IDE development. Eclipse is platform independent and is built around an extension mechanism involving modules known as plugins.

Eclipse has a very large number of free and commercial plugins available for carrying out a variety of different tasks. This includes support for languages such as Java, C, C++, and Fortran, as well as support for such things as HTML, XML, UML, and many web technologies. More information on available plugins is at the Eclipse Plugin Resource Center.

Many companies have built technology based on Eclipse, including IBM, Nokia, Borland, and Macromedia.
   
Q: How does Workbench use Eclipse?
  Wolfram Workbench is a modified version of Eclipse that contains a number of plugins for working with Mathematica and other Wolfram technologies.
   
Q: How does the Eclipse version supplied as part of Workbench compare to standard Eclipse?
  The version of Eclipse has been modified to alter various icons and remove some material such as extended documentation. The core is very much standard Eclipse.
   
Q: Can I use standard Eclipse to run Workbench plugins?
  Yes, you can install Workbench plugins into different versions of Eclipse. To get just the plugins, when choosing your Workbench download platform simply select the "Eclipse" option.
   
Q: Which Eclipse plugins are compatible with Workbench?
  Eclipse has a very large number of free and commercial plugins available for carrying out a variety of different tasks. This includes support for languages such as Java, C, C++, and Fortran, as well as support for such things as HTML, XML, UML, and many web technologies. More information on available plugins is at the Eclipse Plugin Resource Center. In almost all cases these plugins are compatible with Workbench.
   
Q: With what Wolfram products can I use Workbench?
  Workbench works with Mathematica, gridMathematica, Mathematica Personal Grid Edition, webMathematica, Mathematica for the Classroom, and Mathematica for Students.
   
Q: To run Workbench, do I need to install anything else?
  To use Workbench you need to have installed Mathematica, or any other Workbench-compatible Wolfram product. If you have that, then when you install Workbench you will have everything that is required.
   
Q: If I am running a multi-language development project, can I use Workbench to manage the workflow?
  Yes, Workbench can be very useful for multi-language development. This is because of the wide range of plugins available for Eclipse.
   
Q: Why has Workbench been built on Eclipse?
  The main benefit of building Workbench on top of Eclipse is that we have gained a very large feature set with much less effort than if we had written everything from scratch.

In addition, the fact that we can build in support for other features and languages is an important bonus.
   
Q: What platforms are supported?
  At present we have validated Windows, Mac OS X (Universal), and Linux. However, we will be validating more so that Workbench can support all Mathematica platforms.
   
Q: What versions of Mathematica are supported by Workbench?
  Workbench supports Mathematica 5.2 and higher, as well as other Wolfram products that include those versions of Mathematica.
   
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