In-Depth

Tool said to ease J2EE, EJB development

• By John K. Waters
• June 25, 2002

[JUNE 24, 2002] - While J2EE has maintained considerable momentum as a platform for building and deploying enterprise-scale Java applications and Web services, observers also note that the technology can be difficult for basic Java developers to navigate. At the same time, experts said, Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs) can be challenging to create, deploy and manage.

Simplifying such development has attracted third party developers, including Wakesoft Inc., San Francisco. Back in October 2000, the company unveiled a very early so-called "productized" J2EE architecture. The package, dubbed The Wakesoft Architecture Server, was described as a standard structure with 10 separate but integrated architectures not provided by J2EE APIs that developers could use to build applications.

Last week, the company started shipping version 3.0 of the flagship product, and with it a new component said to help users build and manage J2EE applications. CEO Mike DeVries said the new Wakesoft Architecture Manager lets users change application navigation flows or add, delete and modify business logic without reprogramming. It is also said to enable component reuse and provide service level boundaries for building components.

"The new product can automate a number of the jobs that people do after an app has been built," DeVries told e-ADT. "It gives people a way to manage the architecture, the structure and the behavior of an application after is has been deployed."

DeVries contends that application architecture is the number-one determinant of software quality, especially for developers facing the advent of Web services.

Architecture Manager can work with the other components of the Wakesoft Architecture Server to add flexibility and to simplify configurability and reuse, DeVries said. The solution's components include infrastructure adapters; a set of prebuilt components that isolate core business logic from infrastructure changes; and application development accelerators that provide integration with existing IDEs, modeling tools and application servers.

The package currently runs on leading J2EE app servers, including BEA Systems' WebLogic 5.1 and 6.1, IBM's WebSphere 4.0, the JBoss open-source app server and the Oracle9i Application Server.