Oracle has updated the TopLink Java development tool it recently
acquired from WebGain, along with a road map pledging continued
TopLink support for competitors' databases and application
servers.
The new version, called Oracle9i Application Server TopLink 9.0.3,
features support for Oracle9i AS connection-pooling technology,
which enables multiple connections to a server. It is the first
release of the product since Oracle acquired the technology and is
now built in to Oracle9i AS.
Also featured are performance optimisations and support for Service
Pack 1 of the BEA Systems WebLogic Server application server.
The Oracle road map for TopLink includes continued support for
third-party application servers, including BEA WebLogic and IBM
WebSphere, and databases such as IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server
as well as those from Sybase and Informix.
Oracle's road map answers the question about whether or not the
company would continue support for third-party products with
TopLink following the June acquisition, according to John Magee,
vice-president of Oracle9i product marketing.
However, Oracle9i AS users get the new version of TopLink free
while users of the other vendors' products must pay $7,000 (£4,500)
per processor. A trial version is available for free, with fees
charged once developers build a production application.
TopLink is described by Oracle as a persistence framework featuring
a toolset and code to make it easier to build Java applications to
function with relational databases. The tool makes applications run
faster as well as cutting time needed to develop them.
Future enhancements include adding support for direct access to
data sources besides relational databases, including Web services
and XML documents and files. "What we're seeing is Web services are
an increasingly important source of information as more and more
data is exposed as Web services," Magee said.
The TopLink framework will evolve to enable aggregation of data
from multiple relational and non-relational information sources
into a common object model. Services will be provided such as XML
caching, XML query, and data transformation, Oracle said.
The tool is available now.
Oracle has listed other major benefits of the latest version of
TopLink, including enhanced performance with caching technology
that minimises database and network traffic while using JDBC
databases and resource optimisations to allow development teams to
streamline the development process and focus on building the
application, not the infrastructure.