JBoss Group will release the developer version of an
upgrade to its open-source Java application server next week,
employing a programming model claimed make life easier for
developers creating web applications for large
enterprises.
The model, known as aspect-oriented programming (AOP), was
developed about a decade ago at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center
(PARC), said Marc Fleury, founder and chief executive officer of
JBoss Group.
Its use in JBoss 4.0 should make it easier for developers to
build applications that include functions important for enterprises
such as object persistence, caching and replication, he said.
JBoss competes with commercial application servers from BEA
Systems, IBM, Sun Microsystems and others. JBoss Group makes money
selling services and documentation around the open-source product.
Its product has proved a popular development platform and the
company hoped to expand its use in production environments at large
businesses.
BEA, IBM and other commercial suppliers have been developing
tools that try to simplify applications development using J2EE
(Java 2 Enterprise Edition). JBoss Group claims to be the
only company following the AOP route, which Fleury described as "on
a par with object-oriented programming". He also likened it to the
programming model used in Microsoft's development tools.
"What it allows us to do in the Java camp is to do a lot of what
.net Framework offers - ease of use and ease of programming," he
said.
Supporting AOP in JBoss will allow developers to write simple
Java objects and then apply more sophisticated enterprise functions
later in the development process, turning those programs into J2EE
applications, Fleury said.
JBoss Group believed government users, particularly in Europe
but also in the US, would be interested in the product. It also
claimed to have attracted a few large corporate customers.
However, the JBoss application server has not yet been certified
as J2EE-compliant. JBoss has accused Sun of "stonewalling" its
attempts to become certified, saying that its product "supports the
J2EE 1.3 specification" even though it has not been certified by
Sun.
Sun maintained it has given JBoss the opportunity to take its
tests and to certify its product as J2EE-compliant. In March it
extended an offer to JBoss to license the test suite, said Rick
Saletta, Sun group marketing manager for softare sales and
licensing.
Fleury said JBoss wanted to negotiate terms of the offer,
including the price, and said he has had no luck trying to meet
with senior Sun officials to discuss it.
The developer edition of JBoss 4.0 will be available as a free
download next from the JBoss Group website and from
SourceForge.net. The final version for deploying applications in
production will be available in the fourth quarter.
James Niccolai writes for IDG News
Service