News

Oracle Updates App Server 10g

• By John K. Waters
• September 20, 2005

Oracle disclosed details of the enhancements planned for the upcoming Oracle Application Server 10g release 3 at this week's Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco.

The update includes enhancements to the JDeveloper IDE and the Oracle Application Developer Framework—new usability features, easy-to-use code re-factoring, support for Java 5.0 and J2EE 1.4, and a visual, declarative JavaServer Faces and Apache Struts-based development environment with a library of GUI components. These development tools also support the Enterprise Java Beans 3.0 specification.

This update expands Oracle’s support of popular open-source tools, frameworks and runtimes, says Rick Schultz, SVP of Oracle Fusion Middleware. In addition to Apache Struts, it will be certified with such open-source software as Spring, Apache Axis, Apache MyFaces, Hibernate, Tapestry, JUnit, CVS, SubVersion, Ant, Eclipse and Log4J. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 features support for standards required to build next-generation SOAs, including WS-Reliable Messaging, WS-Security, WS-Federation, Web Services Metadata, Web Services Invocation Framework and REST Web Services.

Oracle 10g is a key component of Oracle Fusion Middleware. Oracle bills it as "a comprehensive and integrated enterprise service-oriented architecture middleware platform." The company says it will also serve as the technology foundation for Oracle's Fusion Architecture, the platform for its Project Fusion initiative.

The 10g Release 3 is certified to interoperate with more than 128 products, including Microsoft.NET, IBM WebSphere, IBM MQ-Series, Cisco Local Director, F5 Big IP, Checkpoint firewalls, Content Management, and Systems Management.

Oracle Application Sever 10g release 3 will also come with its first-ever rules engine, says Dennis MacNeil, product director for Oracle Application Server and Developer Tools, to allow companies to make changes to applications by configuring business policies, rather than by writing Java code.

“The business rules engine helps customers to abstract their rules from some of the rest of the logic of their application,” MacNeil explains, “so it becomes a more flexible application that they can change more easily. It’s highly simplified and declarative, so you don’t actually have to know how to write code. As your business needs change, or the business environment you are working in changes, you can implement your policies to adjust to those changing needs without having to open up the code in your application."

The enhancements build on a "hot-pluggable" architecture, says Schultz. “We feel that it’s important for our customers to be able to use different elements of our Fusion Middleware product family with their existing IT investments—all the stuff they already have installed,” Schultz tells ProgrammingTrends.

Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 is due sometime before the end of the company's fiscal year (which ends in May).