IBM | XML, Web Services, and the Data Revolution


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	XML, Web Services, and the Data Revolution By Frank P. Coyle
	Table of Contents

	Chapter 6. .NET, J2EE, and Beyond

IBM is active in Web services.

IBM, an early player in the Web services arena, was an original partner with Microsoft and Ariba in the rollout of the UDDI specification that is used for the registration and discovery of Web services. IBM has also been a longstanding proponent of XML and has been extremely active in the development of XML support tools. The IBM AlphaWorks Web site contains numerous tools for working with XML and Web services. IBM was one of the first companies to make its Java XML4J parser widely available, and its UDDI4J Java-based toolkit for working with UDDI has been made open source. IBM also has implemented a UDDI registry at http://www.ibm.com/services/uddi.

Unlike Microsoft's .NET or Sun ONE, IBM does not have an umbrella term that it uses to describe its Web services offerings. IBM's Web services initiative centers around its middleware and development tools. Its centerpiece Web services offering is its WebSphere application server that includes the Web services protocols and standards. Associated with WebSphere are tools that facilitate the creation of Web services.

IBM has based its Web services “aware WebSphere application server around J2EE.

The WebSphere software platform, built around J2EE, delivers a full set of APIs for XML, enterprise Java, and Web services. IBM's experience and background with mainframe computing lets them provide these services across a range of platforms, including Microsoft Windows NT, Linux, HP-UX, and IBM S/390.

IBM's WebSphere middleware server supports the development, deployment, and integration of e-business applications from Web publishing to transaction processing. Within WebSphere, IBM leverages its longstanding experience in transaction processing with its Customer Information Control System (CICS) to provide high transaction throughput in its MQSeries middleware that integrates Java's EJB, CORBA, and Web services technologies.

ECLIPSE

IBM's Web services integration centers around WebSphere Studio, a toolset built using Eclipse, an open-source, Java-based software platform designed for building IDEs. Eclipse is an effort to reduce the complexity associated with building applications that rely on other applications and services. With Eclipse, a specialized IDE can be constructed that draws on the services of other toolsets from different vendors . Developers can build more complex applications by working with only one IDE rather than having to master multiple tools and travel up the learning curves associated with each.

From a collaborative Web perspective, IBM's Eclipse effort is very much in keeping with the underlying software philosophy of the Web that says, in effect, "keep it simple and assemble complexity." The Eclipse effort is supported by more than 150 toolmakers so that Web-service development with the WebSphere Studio toolset can be integrated with a variety of different tools that will be built using Eclipse technology standards.


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