I had a problem with eclipse 3.1.2, the perspective was there and I could create a squirrel project but when I tried to open a new squirrel file there was an error message about not being able to find a one of the org.eclipse.jface.text classes (I think!). So, I got rid of 3.1.2, installed 3.1 instead , and as stated above, extracted the sqdev_2_October_2005.zip file into my eclipse\plugins folder and started eclipse. Perspective was there, created a new project and created a new squirrel file.