BEA Systems is to offer its XML Beans technology for XML
document management to the Apache open-source
community.
"This submission is important for integrating with other
back-end systems. It's important for web services," said Byron
Sebastian, BEA vice president and general manager of BEA WebLogic
Workshop and WebLogic Portal.
XML Beans makes it easier to write logic that takes advantage of
XML messages being passed between web services, he added.
XML Beans is a technology to help Java developers manage XML
documents more easily by providing Java object interfaces while
preserving access to underlying XML messages to enable loose
coupling between applications for greater application reliability
and scalability.
BEA has also launched its Page Flow Portability Kit, which is
designed to make it easier for developers to build enterprise web
applications on the BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1 The kit enables
flexibility to deploy page flows to any J2EE platform.
Page Flows provides a software engineering framework to enable
developers to separate user interface code from navigational
control and other business logic, and to track application status.
BEA is basing Page Flows on Struts 1.1, a framework for building
enterprise websites.
BEA also plans to develop technology to enable users to receive
notifications in a browser. To be part of BEA WebLogic Workshop,
the technology will be based on instant messaging. Users might
receive notifications such as trouble tickets or stock quotes.
"We want to take the browsers that our customers use and make
them more capable," Sebastian said. "The technology behind instant
messaging is a key part of that."
Inclusion of the technology in Workshop is at least a year away,
however.
BEA, like Sun Microsystems, has no plans to join the Eclipse
open-source tools initiative, viewing the IBM-led initiative as
having proprietary technology.
BEA has launched a standards portal to offer customers and
developers the latest information on BEA's support for existing and
emerging standards. It will track Java Specification Requests
(JSRs), Web services standards and open-source initiatives. The
portal is located at
http://dev-test.bea.com:90/technologies/standards/overview.jsp.
Paul Krill writes for InfoWorld