BEA Systems Inc. kicked off eWorld, its annual customer conference, with a beta release of WebLogic Workshop 8.1. BEA debuted the programming application just last year, promising developers with little Java training that they too could build intricate Java-based enterprise applications. Often compared to Microsoft’s Visual Basic tools, WebLogic Workshop 1.0 introduced controls that allow developers to access prewritten J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) code, enabling them to focus less on actual coding and more on business logic.
Version 8.1 features a unified framework, where a developer uses a single IDE, programming model, and runtime framework to create any application type, whether that be a Web application, Web service, portal or integration application. BEA has also added more controls and the ability to create custom controls to Workshop. And BEA promises that Workshop 8.1 will make J2EE development even easier than with 1.0, as it eliminates the need to write low-level APIs. The tool simplifies concepts like events and properties so developers can focus on their business domains.
OASIS looks at Web services management
The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) plans to work with other standards organizations to define a standard way of using Web services architecture and technology for managing distributed resources, OASIS announced recently.
The newly formed OASIS Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) Technical committee plans to work with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) as well as with other OASIS security and Web services concerns. OASIS will align its work with similar efforts at the other organizations. “I think this is significant in that this new technical committee is going to focus on Web services, not only management using Web services but the management of Web services (themselves),” said Winston Bumpus, chairman of the committee and director of standards at Novell Inc.
Collaxa readies Web services tool
Collaxa Inc. within two months plans to release a Web services deployment tool that utilizes the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS) specification backed by IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp., and BEA Systems Inc.
Collaxa Orchestration Server 2.0, which is now available in an evaluation release, is intended to enable developers to publish asynchronous and synchronous Web services and utilize them for transactional business flows, according to Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Collaxa. A console based on BPEL4WS provides for reporting, auditing and debugging capabilities.
