IBM, iPlanet, Oracle brew fresh Java

IBM, IPLANET, AND ORACLE will attempt to move their respective Web services strategies forward at JavaOne this week, unwrapping new products to offer developers a smoother way to create, deploy, and integrate Web services.

Working in concert, Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM’s WebSphere Studio Integration Edition and WebSphere Application Server 4.1 Enterprise Edition allow developers to tie Java and non-Java applications together with existing Web services to create logical workflow. Users can make that workflow available on an applications server and expose it as a Web service.

“This allows you to ‘choreograph’ or pull information from multiple sources at one time and save it as a workflow,” said Scott Cosby, IBM’s manager of WebSphere business process integration based in San Francisco.

iPlanet will also detail an improved Web services integration strategy, announcing plans to eliminate silo architectures by enhancing integration capabilities. The company will do so by announcing an upgrade to its Integration Server and iPlanet Portal Server, according to Sanjay Sarathy, director of developer enablement at iPlanet in Santa Clara, Calif.

Now a wholly owned business unit of Palo Alto, Calif.-based Sun Microsystems, iPlanet is equipping its integration server with a WSDL (Web Services Description Language) importing capability, which allows users to take advantage of Web services for integration purposes. “The WSDL import helped us build the full integration features on a standard Web services basis,” said Dave Hearn, director of business integration at iPlanet.

iPlanet is also adding support for XAD (XML Adapter Designer) to the integration server, which enables integration at the XML level, Hearn said. In addition, the company will announce that Portal Server now has native JCA (Java Connector Architecture) capability. Sarathy said that JCA within the portal enables users to connect the portal directly to back-end systems and pull out information and business logic to make it available via the portal.

Meanwhile, JavaOne attendees will receive from Oracle a free Oracle9i Application Server Developer Preview CD with the latest version of Oracle9i Application Server Release 2 with J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) 1.3 support and Oracle9i JDeveloper, according to the company. The Redwood Shores, Calif.-based company will also announce a portal developers kit for Oracle9i Application Server. The kit enables integration of Java applications, or “portlets,” into Oracle9i Application Server-based portals.

Also planned for availability this week is Oracle9i Application Server J2ME (J2EE Mobile Edition) Developer Kit.

Oracle will also announce new partners for Oracle9i JDeveloper Add-In Kit, for plugging in third-party tools to JDeveloper to provide a single developer UI. Companies such as Mercury Interactive and Compuware are participating.