Sun to tout Java in Web services

SAN FRANCISCO - Sun and its partners will make a major push at the JavaOne Conference next week to solidify Java as the preferred choice over Microsoft's .Net as the basis for Web services in corporations.

Sun is expected to promote heavily the next release of Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE), which along with other advances from Sun and its partners is intended to make it easier for companies to exploit emerging Web services technologies for building new applications and integrating existing ones.

"J2EE 1.4 and its standards will make Web services a first-class part of the Java platform, supposedly as well integrated into J2EE as they are into Microsoft's .Net," says Michael Gilpin, research fellow with Giga Information Group.

But Java's backers face a number of obstacles - including a lack of management and security frameworks - in trying to create a package of standards, protocols, software and tools that will offer a viable Web services alternative to .Net.

Microsoft says it is spending $5 billion on research and development just for .Net, which Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has said "[W]ill affect every piece of code written here." Sun's entire research and development budget is less than half that amount.

Still, the Web services market is wide open, as most businesses have only begun experimenting with them and vendor strategies are still unfolding. Web services are application functions that use a set of Web protocols such as XML and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) to simplify data access and exchange.

Showtime for Web services

Among anticipated announcements at JavaOne is Hewlett-Packard's unveiling of its HP-Web Services Platform 2.0, tools and programs for creating Web services and tying them into Java-based applications on the HP application server. Additions include a server for handling SOAP messages, a tool for creating services and another for registering them in a Universal Description, Discovery and Integration directory.

Also at the show, SilverStream, a maker of Java development tools and an application server, will unveil eXtend 4.0. The new edition will support the latest J2EE specification and improve Web services support.

Web services will be the top focus at JavaOne, as evidenced by the event's Web services "track," which includes nearly 70 technical sessions and 46 "birds of a feather" events (informal meetings of enterprise developers and Sun software engineers). The next-largest track, with 52 sessions and 40 informal meetings, is about J2EE.

The JavaOne sessions are aimed at helping developers begin using the most recent Java APIs, along with protocols such as SOAP, to start building workable Web services. "Web services are about [application] integration and interoperability," says Kyle Gabhart, senior technical architect with Objective Solutions, a software engineering firm specializing in Web service technologies. "They're not [yet] about computers running around locating and dynamically binding to other services on their own accord."

By focusing on integration, Web services can, for example, let employees use a Web browser to access information about their pension plan, the number of vacation hours earned to date and a human resources seminar on 401(k) investment strategies.

"In the past, you'd have to write custom software to integrate with three different legacy systems to do this," says Frank Cohen, CEO of PushToTest, which makes automated testing tools for Web services. "Now, you write SOAP interfaces to these back-end functions, and make a simple SOAP request via the portal."

But this deceptively simple model raises again some familiar, and big, problems, developers say. "One thing that's easy to lose sight of is that Web services are, in fact, a distributed, service-oriented mechanism [that requires] a certain degree of overhead and network lag," Gabhart says. "Data is [being] streamed across a network connection. Additionally, there is the cost [in performance and processing] of marshalling XML to and from the transport layer. All of these factors must be considered to ensure optimum performance of an enterprise Web service."

So far, he says, hardly anyone in either the Java or .Net camps has grappled with fundamental issues such as what is a distributed computing architecture, including Web services security, transaction handling, logging and auditing, and process workflow.

This is a key goal of J2EE 1.4.It's easy today to build loosely coupled Web services on J2EE, says Ralph Galantine, a Sun product line manager. But marrying these with distributed Java applications, especially Enterprise JavaBeans, is additional work. "J2EE 1.4 will . . . fully integrate the tightly coupled JavaBeans programming model with the loosely coupled XML model," he says. Enterprise JavaBeans interfaces can be easily turned into Web services; Web services can easily work with Enterprise JavaBeans.

Challenges ahead for Sun and other Java backers include:

Agreeing upon a security framework for Web services, and a reliability mechanism that assures Web services messages, sent via SOAP, actually are being exchanged and acted upon.

Gaining ground

Despite these issues, there is evidence that J2EE has gained ground in the past year as a Web services platform. And of course it doesn't hurt that Java server technology is already in use at an estimated 25,000 sites, according to Giga.

A recent Giga survey found about three-quarters of 110 businesses surveyed were either still researching Web services or working only on Web service pilots or prototypes.

But nearly the same percentage were looking to J2EE or Java application server vendors, such as IBM, Sun, Oracle and BEA Systems, to provide the foundation for their Web services plans, instead of Microsoft's .Net software and services.

"Java, J2EE and the like have won the attention of senior management because the Java-based vendors came in and demonstrated their products scaled, and were secure," writes Howard Silver, project manager at ACNielsen in Schaumburg, Ill., in an online newsgroup debate.

Silver says for .Net to succeed, Microsoft needs to show corporate executives that .Net Web services are scalable, secure and can work with Java applications on Unix servers.

Giga's Gilpin says J2EE is well positioned to keep its edge over .Net on server-side Web service implementations in big companies. "J2EE has a value proposition [for them] in terms of its heterogeneity, which .Net can't provide," he says. "That's a sustainable advantage."