Candle Corp. this week released a new product that builds on Candle's existing bridge between message queuing products from IBM and Microsoft Corp.
The new Roma Business Service Platform uses this bridge capability but adds new APIs, a directory and a component model. The additions are intended to make it much easier for application developers to let applications work together over a network, via the third-party messaging products.
Developers can add the standard Roma API to an application, which then can call for a network-based service. The local Roma code accesses, via the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, the Roma directory to find the appropriate server-based applications. The server-based Roma code uses the directory information (such as location, platform name and type) and the available messaging transport to make the necessary connections on behalf of the front-end client.
The messaging transport can be either IBM MQSeries or Microsoft Message Queuing product.
A key new feature in this release is Roma's ability to use discrete software components or create a component wrapper around existing application functions, such as CICS or IMS transactions. Developers can reuse these components as needed instead of writing new custom code for each application-to-application interaction.
Gartner Group, Inc. analyst Roy Schulte, in a written analysis of Roma, said the product is most suited for "new, custom-written applications or for 'supra-applications' where new functions are being added into an existing system that is amenable to some modification."
But Schulte added that "Roma does not currently offer much in the way of message brokering services, such as message transformation, content-based routing, message warehousing, off-the-shelf adapters to dissimilar development and run-time environments, sophisticated flow control." Currently, some other products are more capable than Roma of connecting into packaged and legacy applications that can't be easily changed to use the Roma API or message format, according to Schulte.
Some of these issues will be addressed later this year, said Aubrey Chernick, chairman and president of Candle in Santa Monica, Calif. Late this year, Roma will have changes so it can work with an array of front-end development tools such as Visual Basic or PowerBuilder. A third-party program will be incorporated to support transformations between incompatible systems. Two other new features will be the Roma Systems Manager, due in August, for tracking the application interactions over the net, and clustering, which will let components run on two or more servers.
Roma Business Service Platform is available now, on Windows NT, AIX, Solaris and MVS. Pricing ranges from $750 per NT or Unix processor to $25,000 for an IBM Model Group 40 MVS processor.
