IBM Rational Developer for i for SOA Construction (RDi SOA) 7.5 is a software bundle that includes:

• Rational Developer for i (RDi)
• Rational Business Developer
• Rational Host Access Transformation Services (HATS) Toolkit

When you purchase RDi SOA, you get the installation CDs for each of the above products. The number of CDs can be a bit overwhelming at first, so here is a breakdown of what you get:

• 1 RDi SOA Quick Start CD

• Rational Developer for i
  • 1 Quick start CD which has the RDi Quick Start Guide on it
  • 2 CDs with product installation on them (labeled Disk 1 and Disk 2)
  • 1 CD with the RDi activation kit (this is the CD without any subtitle)

• Rational Business Developer
  • 6 CDs with product installation on them (labeled Disk 1 through Disk 6)
  • 1 CD with the RDi SOA activation kit (labeled Activation Kit)

• Host Access Transformation Services
  • 1 CD with product installation on it

• WebSphere Application Server Test Environments
  • 2 CDs for WAS 6.0
  • 4 CDs for WAS 6.1
  • 4 CDs for WAS 70

• Miscellaneous CDs with DB2 Express edition

Rational Business Developer, Rational Developer for i, and HATS need to be installed separately. Not to worry though, they can all be installed into the same "package group" (installation manager terminology) which means they will all run in the same Eclipse Workbench instance. The attached Quick Start Guide does a good job of explaining the installation process step by step.

Trial Editions

If you want to take RDi SOA for a spin before buying it, you can download the trial edition of each product and install them into the same package group following the instructions in the attached Quick Start Guide (skipping the steps about applying the activation kits). If you then purchase RDi SOA you don't need to uninstall and reinstall, you can just apply the activation kits to the trail editions. Here are the links to the trial editions:

• Rational Developer for i: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/r/rdi/
• Rational Business Developer: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/r/rbex/
• HATS (only required if you want to try HATS): http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/ws/whats/

More Information

There's lots of great information out there, here are some places to start:

• EGL Cafe
• Rational Developer for i
• Rational Developer for i for SOA Construction
• HATS