WAS is not famous for being an easy platform to develop for if you're not using RAD. Any hints or tricks to do so with netbeans, eclipse, idea, emacs/vi/ant ? Is it even possible to develop the application on top of - for instance - tomcat and then deploy it with confidence to a WAS - 6.1 - server ? Thanks.
MyEclipse Blue 8.5 onwards is good option as RAD replacement. WAS 7 DE is free from IBM, so MyEclipse Blue+WAS7 DE is a killer combo. You will save 90% of IDE cost.