Application servers get SOA treatment

As more corporate architects adopt a new approach to building applications, the vendors responsible for the foundation - the application server - are getting their own products in shape to accommodate the new development style.

That style is service-oriented architecture (SOA ), which calls for the construction of modular, reusable application components that avoid the brittleness of traditional legacy IT assets. Businesses are ready for it. At least 80% of the development projects initiated over the next two years will be about service-enabling applications, according to Gartner.

To meet the demands of SOA-seeking businesses, Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) application server vendors BEA Systems, IBM, JBoss and Oracle have been outfitting their wares with once-optional, but now expected, features such as support for Simple Object Access Protocol and messaging.

But it's not enough to simply provide the tools that let users build services-based applications, says Shaun Connolly, vice president of product management at JBoss, an open source middleware vendor. It's also important that the application server's technical architecture is service-enabled, so that customers can swap in or replace functions such as Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) containers, servlets, messaging tools and management features as needed. "A monolithic type of approach would make it difficult to take one out and use another," Connolly says.

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As more corporate architects adopt a new approach to building applications, the vendors responsible for the foundation - the application server - are getting their own products in shape to accommodate the new development style.

That style is service-oriented architecture (SOA ), which calls for the construction of modular, reusable application components that avoid the brittleness of traditional legacy IT assets. Businesses are ready for it. At least 80% of the development projects initiated over the next two years will be about service-enabling applications, according to Gartner.

To meet the demands of SOA-seeking businesses, Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) application server vendors BEA Systems, IBM, JBoss and Oracle have been outfitting their wares with once-optional, but now expected, features such as support for Simple Object Access Protocol and messaging.

But it's not enough to simply provide the tools that let users build services-based applications, says Shaun Connolly, vice president of product management at JBoss, an open source middleware vendor. It's also important that the application server's technical architecture is service-enabled, so that customers can swap in or replace functions such as Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) containers, servlets, messaging tools and management features as needed. "A monolithic type of approach would make it difficult to take one out and use another," Connolly says.

To that end, JBoss has been reworking its microkernel to make it more detailed, so customers can be more selective about the Java objects they deploy. The new JBoss Microcontainer 1.0 will be the foundation of JBoss Application Server 5.0, which is due out midyear 2006, Connolly says. "We'll have basically replaced the underpinnings of our server with this newer, lighter-weight, service-oriented microcontainer."

In a corporate setting, granularity is important so users can skinny down an application server platform for resource-constrained deployments, such as a network appliance, while loading up on services for a high-end clustered environment, Connolly says. "The only way you can do that is if the platform is designed in a service-oriented fashion."

JBoss Application Server 5.0 also will feature Seam 1.0, which is a new component model from JBoss that simplifies the task of writing complex Java applications by masking some of the code required to handle application state management. "It drives a lot of code out of the process," Connolly says. And less code means fewer bugs, he says.

Java EE 5

In the bigger picture, application simplicity is a key theme of the forthcoming Java Platform Enterprise Edition 5 (Java EE 5) specification, which is nearing complettion. Earlier this year Sun announced a new naming convention for its Java platform, dropping J2EE 5.0 in favor of Java EE 5.

App server vendors Oracle and JBoss have begun developing with Java EE 5, the cornerstone of which is the latest release of the EJB component architecture.

In the past, hampering EJB adoption were complex development and heavyweight container requirements, but EJB 3.0 is lightweight and much easier to program, Connelly says. "If you've had any preconceived notions about Enterprise JavaBeans in the past, I encourage folks to erase their memories. Because this is basically how things should have been done in the first place," he says. "It's tough to say on average how much it simplifies things down, but it can be a factor of 10x in the size of code."

Blake Connell, who handles product marketing for BEA Systems' WebLogic Server, agrees. "One of the knocks on EJB is that it's a pretty highball art for developers. The next EJB release will alleviate some of that," Connell says.

For its part, BEA made quick advances into the world of Java EE 5 with its recent purchase of SolarMetric, a Java tools maker known for its persistence engine. Object-persistence technology helps developers work with relational databases and handle transient objects, such as an online shopping cart or airline ticket reservation.

BEA plans to incorporate SolarMetric's Kodo engine into its next major WebLogic Server release, due in late 2006. In the meantime, developers can download the SolarMetric technology, if they want to play with Java EE 5 and EJB 3.0 previews, Connell says.

Another early player in the EJB 3.0 world is Oracle, which co-led the specification development with Sun and has released a preview version of its EJB 3.0-ready Oracle Application Server. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3, which is scheduled to be available by midyear 2006, will offer baked-in support for Java EE 5 and EJB 3.0.