Web services-based app server upgraded by WSO2
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(InfoWorld) - WSO2 is upgrading its open source application server, which has been centered on Web services rather than being of the usual Java variety most common in this product space. Featured in version 2.0 of the companyâs WSAS (Web Services Application Server) are integration with the Eclipse IDE and capabilities for data services and clustering. The product is available next week and will be officially unveiled on July 16. Formerly called Tungsten, WSAS is a service-hosting environment. It offers a standard Web services runtime deployable with Java application servers from vendors such as BEA Systems, IBM, and JBoss without requiring vendor-specific coding, said Sanjiva Weearawarana, chairman of Sri Lanka-based WSO2. "If you use our runtime, it gives you a consistent, fully open source runtime that runs across all those [platforms] and gives you a consistent programming model," Weearawarana said. WSAS has been available both as a stand-alone application and for hosting within Java servers and Apache Tomcat servlet containers. Applications have included linking legacy systems to Web services as well as workflow, business process management, and data integration. Eclipse integration in version 2.0 means the full application server can be run within the IDE as opposed to having it outside of Eclipse. This makes testing of classes easier. Data services capabilities in the release enable provision of services interfaces to relational data without having to write code. This can be done using SQL queries, mappings, and wizard capabilities. WSO2 Application Server is differentiated by being built from the ground up for Web services and SOA, said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink. "What's most notable in version 2.0 is the Eclipse integration, better clustering and high availability, support for EJB services, better security, and data services. Perhaps the most notable of these improvements are the data services, which help service-enable relational data from a variety of heterogeneous sources," Bloomberg said. "We're finding that dealing with heterogeneous data issues is one of the technical stumbling blocks for many SOA implementations, and WSAS should help many enterprises address those issues," Bloomberg said. Clustering and high-availability boosts performance and uptime for WSAS 2.0. The application server can be clustered across any number of systems, Weearawarana said. To prevent denial of service attacks, an access throttling capability regulates access to services. To improve security, XKMS (XML Key Management Specification) key management is included. Support for the WS-Security, WS-Trust, WS-Policy and WS-SecureConversation specifications also is featured. Legacy Enterprise JavaBeans can be redeployed as Web services in the application server. An example could be an EJB that manages a business account. Backward compatibility is provided between WSAS 2.0 and the Apache Axis 1.0 Web services runtime. Services written in Axis 1.0 can be deployed with WSAS 2.0 and leverage new Web services protocols supported by WSAS, such as WS-ReliableMessaging or WS-Policy. WSO2 sells related support services for WSAS 2.0. The 1.0 version of WSAS, introduced a year ago, has been downloaded about 10,000 times, Weearawarana said.
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InfoWorld - Branching out in the SOA space, MuleSource will introduce Tuesday its Mule Galaxy software, an open source SOA governance platform with an integrated registry and repository.
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SaaSWizard is announcing Monday its SaaSWizard 2.0 rapid application development platform for building SaaS and internally hosted applications, sans programming.Positioned for hosted business-to-business applications, the Java-based platform enables developers and original equipment manufacturers to quickly assemble applications that can be hosted by SaaSWizard or inside a corporate firewall, SaaSWizard said.SaaSWizard offers a business rules engine to automate back-end processes."I'd say the main focus of the new version of functionality is the business rules engine," said Colin Earl, SaaSWizard CEO."It allows you to configure the program to automate business processes," such as a sales request that has been submitted but not responded to in several hours, Earl said. Business rules can be defined to escalate a request like this, he added.Version 2.0 also features dynamic data modeling, enabling custom tables and table relationships to be created quickly; graphical drag-and-drop workflow, and a virtualized grid environment. This environment ensures that an application will continue to run when a server or other component fails.Other new features focus on application customization, auditing and advanced access controls for organizations to meet regulatory mandates. SaaSWizard 2.0 also integrates with LDAP directories and Windows management Instrumentation, for automatic discovery of users' computer environments.Also included in version 2.0 are a charting and reporting engine, with dozens of default charts, and drag-and-drop dashboard compilation, for combining charts from multiple tables.A user of the product vouched for its ease of use. "I would characterize it as a rapid development platform that doesn't require programming," with a graphical environment for developing custom applications, said the user, Steve Chipman, founder of Lexnet Consulting Group, a value-added reseller (VAR).Lexnet used the platform to develop ManuLogic, a support application for equipment applications. It can either be hosted or installed on-premises."I like [SaaSWizard] because it's a SaaS platform that's available to a VAR and in general VARs are insulated from the revenue share on SaaS-driven applications," Chipman said. But with SaaSWizard, Lexnet is able to build an application that it could resell, he said.SaaSWizard 2.0 is built on an open source technology stack featuring Linux, the JBoss application server and the MySQL database. Solaris, AIX and Windows also are supported.Additional capabilities include:* Email integration.* A text search engine.* Single sign-on.* Multi-language support.* Customization.
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OCTOBER 06, 2004  - IBM today unveiled a new version of its WebSphere Application Server software, which is designed to protect applications from server downtime and boost enterprise efforts to build a service-oriented architecture (SOA).
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IBM Wednesday introduced a significant overhaul to its WebSphere J2EE application server, with new support for standards-based messaging protocols, better management features and enhancements to improve availability of applications, according to an IBM
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(InfoWorld) - Sun is announcing Monday the release of the GlassFish version 2 open-source application server, which features enterprise-level capabilities for running large-scale applications. The company also will offer a beta release of the upcoming open-source NetBeans 6.0 IDE, which accommodates scripting languages. While the first version of GlassFish was intended for developers, the follow-up release due Monday is intended to place GlassFish in the vein of an enterprise-level application server. Highlighted capabilities include clustering, data replication, and centralized administration of server clusters. Improved interoperability between Web services hosted on Java and Microsoft also is featured as part of a Web services stack dubbed "Project Metro." "This is an outgrowth of our relationship with Microsoft," said Ken Drachnik, Sun open-source community marketing manager. The "Open ESB" capability in version 2 enables integration of Web services and existing enterprise resources. Java Business Integration support provides a standardized approach to delivering SOA via Web services, Sun said. Performance also has been dramatically improved with version 2, according to Sun. GlassFish version 2 is based on Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5. Sun will base its own commercially supported application server, Sun Java System Application Server 9.1, on GlassFish version 2. It will feature an approximately 75 percent price reduction to $4,500 for an annual subscription for four sockets. Sun rivals in the application server space, including JBoss and BEA Systems, have participated in the GlassFish development community because they can leverage technologies available in it, such as the application server's JAXB (Java Architecture for XML Binding) technology, Sun officials said. GlassFish version 2's performance was lauded by analyst Joe Niski of the Burton Group. "I think the performance improvements are pretty good," said Niski, who also mentioned the clustering capabilities as worthwhile. "The basic J2EE application servers are getting more and more commoditized. There are so many free ones out there. This provides really commercial-level performance and scalability to basically a free offering," said Niski. GlassFish has served as reference implementation of Java. It also has been integrated with the NetBeans IDE, allowing developers to deploy SOA applications using business process execution language workflows. With NetBeans 6.0, the IDE moves beyond its Java origins to accommodate scripting languages, JavaScript and Ruby in particular. "The Ruby support is very important because it allows us to really talk to an entirely new segment of developers," said Gregg Sporar, NetBeans evangelist at Sun. "We have room inside the tent for more than just Java developers," Sporar said. The Matisse GUI builder in NetBeans 6.0 supports the Swing framework for building desktop applications and Beans Binding for modifying user interface controls to accommodate back-end data source changes. Also, the code editor in 6.0 has been rewritten and optimized. The profiler, for checking performance problems like memory leaks, now enables developers to stop execution of an application so they can examine what is happening within the program. Version 6.0 integrates with the Subversion version control system. General availability for NetBeans 6.0 is planned for the end of this year. The IDE first was offered in an early-access format at the JavaOne conference in May. Future distributions of NetBeans, starting with the production release of version 6.0, will be offered under either the Common Development and Distribution License or the GNU GPL (General Public License) version 2. Extending NetBeans to GPL is expected to make the platform more attractive to Linux developers.
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SharePoint servers on virtual machines and to perform regular VSS snapshots, later backing them up offline
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According to a new post on the ThinkPHP blog (pointing to the original story on the Yahoo Business site), WSO2 has released a web services framework WSO2 WSF/PHP.   According to Yahoo Biz, a company called WSO2 released their WSO2 WSF Framework C-library. What is more appealing is that there are now bindings for PHP available under a Apache 2.0 license. The company WSO2 describes itself as: "We are thought leaders in the Apache Web service project, where our engineers are core contributors to key projects including Apache Axis2, Apache Sandesha, Apache Rampart, Apache Neethi, Apache Axiom and Apache Synapse."   The framework provdes a set of resources that can be used to quickly create web services for your application. It also features interoperability with .NET and J2EE implementations.   The ThinkPHP post even helps you take the first steps by providing a step-by-step guide to installing the source and getting it up and running.
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(InfoWorld) - Emphasizing SOA, the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) on Monday is publishing draft documents on Web services and security, and seeks public feedback. SOA architects have been awaiting these deliverables, which provide guidance on interoperability for core Web services and business processes in enterprises, WS-I said. "The Web services specifications and the Web services stack is the underlying technology for SOA," said Michael Bechauf, WS-I chairman and SAP vice president of industry standards. Formed in 2002, WS-I focuses on helping vendors and users implement Web services rather than having users labor with the multitude of specifications. "At the end of the day, the end user really shouldn't care about the underlying specifications," Bechauf said. WS-I features members such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and Sun Microsystems. Working Group Drafts being published include Basic Profile 1.2, Basic Security Profile 1.1, and Reliable Secure Profile 1.0 Usage Scenarios. The draft documents are up for public and member review and are expected to be approved early in 2007. "The tangible results will be that vendors will actually build solutions according to those profiles," with users assured that the systems will work together, Bechauf said. Basic Profile 1.2 is the revision of the Basic Profile 1.1, which offers guidance on basic interoperability of the Web services stack. Version 1.2 incorporates errata and includes requirements pertaining to serialization of Web services envelopes and their representation in messages from the WS-I Simple SOAP Binding Profile 1.0. The new profile was constructed mostly using WS-Addressing, which defines a standard mechanism for identifying and exchanging Web services messages between endpoints. Specifications incorporated into Basic Profile 1.2 include Core, SOAP Binding, and WSDL Binding specifications pertinent to WS-Addressing 1.0.Â Â  Comments on Basic Profile may be e-mailed here: wsbasic_comment@ws-i.org WS-I Basic Profiles make life easier for developers by focusing on what they need to know to make Web services work, said analyst Anne Thomas Manes, vice president and research director at Burton Group. "I think the WS-I Basic Profiles are always a good thing because they constrain the specifications, so it gives developers fewer things to worry about," Manes said. "The main reason that you want profiles is they explain how to use the specifications the right way and ensure that you will get a better chance of achieving interoperability," Manes said. She acknowledged that the plethora of Web services specifications can cause confusion among developers. Manes said she has counted 52 WS-* (spoken as âws starâ) specifications for standardizing Web services operations. "That's enough to make anybody's head spin," Manes said. WS-I has been providing guidance on Web services specifications to OASIS, which oversees many of them, Manes said. "A lot of people think that WS-I hasnât done anything for two years but in fact it has," Manes said. Also on the WS-I docket for Monday, the Working Group Draft of Basic Security Profile 1.1 revises the 1.0 version of the document and incorporates errata to data. It profiles WS-Security 1.1 and WS-Security token profiles, including Username, X.500, Kerberos, and SAML (Security Access Markup Language). Feedback on Security Profile 1.1 can be submitted to this e-mail address: wsi_secprofile_comment@lists.ws-i.org The Working Group Draft of Reliable Secure Profile 1.0 Usage Scenarios features guidance on use of Reliable Secure Profile. It features specifications such as WS-ReliableMessaging 1.1 and WS-SecureConversation 1.3 as well as WS-I's Basic Profiles and Basic Security Profiles. Feedback on the Usage Scenarios can be e-mailed to this address: wsi_rsp_comment@lists.ws-i.org. WS-I documents are accessible at the WS-I Web site.
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As the number of Web services specifications proliferates, some developers advocate a return to a simpler approach.
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Two new specifications are published by Microsoft, Systinet, Sonic Software, and BEA. WS-Enumeration is a protocol for enumerating a sequence of XML elements that is suitable for traversing logs, message queues, or other linear information models and WS-Transfer is a protocol for accessing XML representations of Web service-based resources.
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WSO2 seeks to bridge the Ruby programming language and the Ruby on Rails Web framework with the SOA and Web services spaces.
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(InfoWorld) - BEA Systems will fit its Weblogic Server Java application server with improvements geared to Web 2.0, SOA and interoperability with Microsoft's .Net platform, the company said at the BEAWorld San Francisco conference on Wednesday. WebLogic Server 10.3 also features a new modular approach in which users can selectively download only components they want. The upgrade will be offered as a technology preview this fall with general availability set for next year. The application server's Web 2.0 capabilities are enabled through enhanced support for AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and Adobe Flex, said Blake Connell, director of product marketing for WebLogic Server. AJAX provides for a dynamic element to Web applications that is identified with Web 2.0, Connell said. Specifically, a publish-and-subscribe engine within WebLogic Server will provide live updates to AJAX and Flex clients. The engine offers a persistent connection to a rich client, Connell said. BEA this week also announced an alliance with Adobe in which evaluation of copies of WebLogic Server will be featured with Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite, the server component for Flex. In the SOA realm, WebLogic Server 10.3 backs SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) and improvements to the Java API for XML Web Services. "The big point in SOA is support for SAML 2.0, which provides Web single sign-on," Connell said. "SAML enables people to sign on securely with a Web client and then have access to other systems without having to keep re-logging in," Connell added. Java API for XML Web Services, meanwhile, is the specification used for writing Web services capabilities on top of the application server, he said. To accommodate .Net applications, WebLogic Server 10.3 will feature a JMS (Java Message Service) C# client. With this component, users who have deployed .Net systems but want to standardize on JMS as a messaging backbone can do that, Connell said. Leveraging BEA's microServices Architecture, version 10.3 allows for componentizing of WebLogic Server. For example, users could leave out the Java development kit or Enterprise JavaBeans and JMS capabilities if they do not need these, Connell said. "You save megabytes in download size," he said. Java Platform Standard Edition 6 is featured WebLogic Server 10.3, providing for better performance. "This is the underlying Java implementation upon which WebLogic Server sits on," Connell said. Also featured in version 10.3 is backing for the Spring 2.1 Java application framework and Java Persistence API for storing and retrieving application objects in a database. In other happenings at the conference Wednesday, BEA's Bruce Graham, vice president of consulting, likened the year 2007 to 1997, when now-giant companies like eBay and Amazon.com were just getting started. BEA also was in its infancy, he said. "2007 seems to me to be a watershed year," Graham said. Like 1997, young computer hackers are making lots of money and showing up on magazine covers. New companies are emerging with new business models like Wikipedia, YouTube, and Facebook, he said. "There's a wave of innovation occurring, just like 1997," Graham said. Companies now must leverage IT assets to provide a competitive advantage, said Graham. He described SOA, business process management, and enterprise social networks as three preeminent waves of technology that have arisen in response to this need. Also at the conference this week, BEA Systems said it plans to enable its enterprise service bus and portal software products to run as virtual appliances next year. The AquaLogic Service Bus and WebLogic Portal products will run directly in virtualized environments such VMWare. Under the model being deployed by BEA, enterprise applications and supporting infrastructure can be deployed independent of the underlying server and operating system. This enables SOA services to be treated as virtual appliances that can be deployed wherever needed, representing a major shift in the software industry, the company said. BEA's virtual appliance plan is expected to be extended to other components of its Enterprise 360 platform as well, as part of the company's Liquid Enterprise strategy. The virtual appliance plan is being eyed for BEA products that have a volatile workload, said Guy Churchward, BEA vice president for WebLogic Products. BEA has begun offering an instance-based pricing model as part of its virtual appliance strategy, in which the customer pays based on how many instances of software are being deployed, rather than basing pricing the number of CPUs. The company has implemented this strategy with the WebLogic Server -- Virtual Edition variant of its application server.
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ReadiMinds WebServices Applications Suite 2.0 consists of tools to build, integrate, enable and manage enterprise Web services applications.
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An investor's guide to service-oriented architecture
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BEA Systems on Monday is releasing a version of its application infrastructure suite designed to enable ISVs to deliver products for SOAs (service-oriented architectures).
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IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Computer Associates International have joined original developer group in support of the WS-Eventing specification for subscribing to web services-based events.    The specification is intended to define a baseline set of operations that allow web services to provide asynchronous notifications to interested parties.