Easing the assembly and integration of service-oriented architectures (SOAs) is the aim of products rolled out from BEA Systems Inc., Oblix Inc., and Cape Clear Software Inc.
BEA will ship BEA WebLogic Server Process Edition, which combines application development and BPM for a “process-driven” approach to service-oriented applications and SOAs.
Positioned as a high-end edition of WebLogic Application Server, Process Edition serves as a starter kit for SOAs, providing baseline SOA capabilities. Additional functions include BPM, data transformation, and process monitoring.
Oblix will unveil Coresv 4.0, a new version of the company’s services management platform. It features integration with the Oblix Coreid identity management system, increased performance and usability, administrative improvements, and the ability to secure and manage Tibco EAI infrastructure. Tibco will resell the product as a component of the Tibco BusinessWorks suite. Coresv stems from Oblix’s acquisition of Confluent Technologies in February. Release 4.0 advances the integration of Web services management and identity management, Oblix officials said.
Oblix is also rolling out Coreid 7.0, an upgrade to its identity management system. Version 7.0 adds integrated provisioning and workflow, centralized operations reporting, and virtual directory capabilities for making multiple LDAP directories appear as one.
“The big area for us to fill in has been provisioning for intranets,” said Rick Caccia, director of product management and marketing at Oblix.
Also highlighted in Version 7.0 are user and group management and SSO (single sign-on). Oblix has also added features for data collection and for regulatory compliance. Crystal Reports is included for reporting.
For the long term, Oblix is planning to build an SOA for managing business interactions in a decentralized Web environment. Its products will evolve to serve as a collection of management policy services for authentication, user management, logging, routing, and data.
“Ultimately, (Oblix products) will evolve into a single console for all your policy management,” said Ken Sims, vice-president of marketing and business development at Oblix.
Coreid 7.0 has been available since July 30. Coresv 4.0 is due to ship in August.
Also targeting SOAs, Cape Clear is shipping Cape Clear 5, a new version of the company’s ESB (enterprise service bus) platform for SOA-based integration. The package integrates four products: Studio, which is a graphical environment for developing services; Server, which is an ESB for integrating applications; Data Interchange, for data integration; and Manager, for managing Web services and integrations. New features include protocol-independent routing, messaging, and message transformations, as well as BPEL (Business Process Execution Language)-based routing and workflow. Security standards such as XACML (Extensible Access Control Markup Language), SSL, X.509, and SAML are supported.
