Eclipse is the leading IDE for software development on variety of platforms primarly written in Java. Though it was primary used for Java based development, now it extends support for variety of languages like C/C++, PHP etc. Apache Tomcat is an open source web server consists of servlet container primarly used for deploying Java web applications.

BlackBerry is a widely used wireless handheld device today. Though it was originally used for e-mail applications, it extended its capabilities to build many PDA applications based on APIs. Web Service is the standard way of communicating between disparate systems over internet protocol. Domino provides out of the box support for web service from version 7 onwards. MDS Studio is a powerful IDE for creating BlackBerry applications using component based approach.

XML is the de facto standard for exchanging information between disparate systems. Suppose you are a furniture manufacturing company and your dealer/distributor wants to place order requests to you. You create a mail-in database and ask your client to email order requests in XML format. In mail-in database you parse the XML and create Notes order request documents. Once order request went through approval cycle in Lotus Notes, sales order is generated in your backend legacy or ERP system. Sounds cool?