It should include a flexible and powerful, but easy-to-use, language — the API should use Java objects, not SQL tables or other data-store representations as formal query parameters.

JavaScript syntax in many ways is actually more like Java’s than some of these languages, but its prototype-based approach to object-orientation is very different.

However, the Java Platform provides a data structure that greatly simplifies the use of reference objects like this, called the java.util.WeakHashMap class.

Business Objects, maker of business-intelligence software, has announced its intent to join the Eclipse Foundation and incorporate Eclipse open-source programming tools into several of its products.