BEA Systems yesterday revealed beta versions of
its latest suite of WebLogic software products, including its
application server, enterprise portal and integration broker
technologies, at its annual eWorld conference in
Orlando.
However, analysts predicted that companies would be most
interested in the suite's upgraded WebLogic Workshop, since the new
tool provides a unified interface for developing to any of the
WebLogic products.
The first version of WebLogic Workshop, which shipped last year,
was restricted to building web services. The latest version has
been extended to let developers build custom applications, create
portals, integrate applications and manage business processes and
trading partners, said Chet Kapoor, vice president and general
manager of BEA's integration group.
WebLogic Workshop has also been expanded with more controls to
remove the complexity of building applications that rely on Java 2
Enterprise Edition technologies.
"This is a very substantial piece of work," said John Rymer, an
analyst at Giga Information Group. Rymer added that the tool's
initial version served as a proof of concept of BEA's overall
design of an event-based Java development environment similar in
intent to Microsoft's Visual Basic. He predicted that the new tool
will have a substantial effect on developer productivity.
BEA is promoting its new WebLogic Platform as a way to converge
integration and custom application development. Kapoor said the
adoption of integration brokers has been limited, but he hoped
WebLogic Platform 8.1, with its newly unified architecture, would
make integration more mainstream by reducing the complexity, cost
and time needed for such projects.
So far, BEA has made its mark as an application server supplier,
vying with IBM for the top spot in market share. But BEA has
struggled for recognition in application integration.