Borland beefs up JBuilder with Web services
Borland has announced details of a Web services plugin kit for its JBuilder integrated development environment.
Borland's Web Services Kit will let firms create and deploy Web services for Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and a preview release is available for free download from its Web site. Borland has built the kit on its implementation of the Apache TomCat open source engine.
"TomCat has been passed through Borland's quality assurance but is otherwise the same product," said Jon Harrison, Borland's senior technical consultant. "We have also added a graphical user interface." He said the release meant Borland now supports Web services on Java and J2EE; Borland's Delphi platform already supports Web services on Windows, and its Kylix platform supports such services on Linux.
The Web Services Kit handles Simple Object Access Protocol (Soap), Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) and Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and comprises a series of application programming interfaces (APIs) with additional architecture and standards developed by the Java community.
Other features include wizards that generate Java code from WSDL and WSDL from Java code; a UDDI explorer which lets developers browse UDDI servers to find appropriate Web Services; and deployment support for the Apache Axis and Soap2 implementations of the Soap standard.
Mike Thompson of analyst firm Butler Group said UDDI and WSDL are likely to be ratified by a standards body this year and this would encourage firms considering Web services deployment. Soap is already ratified by the W3C.
However, Thompson predicted that this year nearly all Web services would be restricted to internal use within firms. "It may take until 2005 for true finer-grained Web services to be established," he added.
The need for security is one reason why firms may be reluctant to expose Web services to external users. Borland's Harrison said this would continue until a standard security definition was implemented for Web services.