Oracle will ship Oracle JDeveloper 10g, which is a
version of its Java and web services development environment which
the company claims features grid enablement and support for SOAs
(service-oriented architectures).
The JDeveloper 10g also includes Oracle Application Development
Framework (ADF), which is a productivity layer intended to
simplify development, and compliance with the Web Services
Interoperability Organisation Basic Profile 1.0 document for
building interoperable web services.
With JDeveloper 10g, no programming changes are needed to build
an application that will run across a grid.
“What JDeveloper 10g gives you is additional enhancements and
optimisations, which allow you to deploy more componentised,
service-based applications, which are more reusable [and work in
grid environments]," said Rob Cheng, product marketing director for
application server tools.
To boost grid support, the product uses support of web services
standards and declarative techniques to take Java applications and
publish them as web services, Cheng said.
In addition to supporting WS-I Basic Profile, the tool also
supports J2EE 1.4, which has been referred to as the web
services-enabled version of J2EE.
ADF, meanwhile, features a set of runtime libraries that help
Java developers focus more on business logic of their applications
instead of on the technology, Cheng said.
Oracle is ahead of suppliers such as IBM and Sun in providing a
complete offering around SOAs in its development tool, said analyst
Tom Murphy, vice-president of Meta Group.
“Oracle has combined together the framework for grid, all of the
web services pieces and components, on top of their already-strong
IDE [integrated development environment],” Murphy said. “They’re
kind of the first one to put everything together.”
Oracle’s grid strategy, however, is focused on Oracle grid
technologies rather than on mixing with systems based on other
suppliers’ grid systems, Murphy said.
Other suppliers eyeing grid also concentrate on single-supplier
solutions, he added. Oracle is touting its Oracle10g database as a
basis for computing grids.
Oracle JDeveloper 10g is available for $995 (£556) per named
user.
Paul Krill writes for Infoworld