Software Tools Storm the Market

But with the emergence of Web services and the growing adoption of Java, XML and other software technologies, development tools are poised for a comeback this year. Top-tier vendors such as BEA Systems, IBM and Microsoft are emphasizing new application-development tools as an integrating force that can combine a number of disparate functions and services for clients across the Internet. In addition, traditional development tools based on mainframes and client servers have been enhanced to support Java and other new technologies for Web services, according to Gartner analyst Alan Tiedrich.

Whether it's tools for XML, .NET or Java, the tool shed is open again.

Java Jumps

Alfred Chuang, CEO of San Jose, Calif.-based BEA Systems, believes his company's firm commitment to Java has helped get BEA where it is today,at the top of the Internet application-server market. "No one expected Java to gain this much momentum in the marketplace," Chuang says. "It's become a dominant software architecture."

BEA isn't stopping with application-server software, however. Chuang says the company will concentrate on application development and integration in 2002. To that end, BEA is positioning WebLogic Portal and WebLogic Integration as powerful development tools. The company also offers WebLogic Java Adapter for Mainframe, which provides access to mainframe applications from Java applications running on the WebLogic Server. The product also generates Java source for rapid Java development.

Partners Follow the Lead

Partners are following BEA's Java push, as well. New York-based professional services firm Accenture, for example, recently created a Java 2 platform enterprise edition (J2EE) application framework and toolkit to help its customers build Java applications through WebLogic.

Other application-server vendors are also targeting Java development. Macromedia, based in San Francisco, has built on the success of Allaire's JRun Java development tools since merging with Allaire a year ago. JRun Studio provides an environment for rapid application development through JavaServer pages (JSP) and Java servlets, while JRun Server is a certified J2EE server that can

develop and deploy Java-based applications. In addition, Macromedia offers other software development tools, including ColdFusion Server, ColdFusion Studio and Dreamweaver UltraDev 4.

Rational Software launched its development-tools set, Rational Suite v2002, in November, with enhanced Java and XML support for both Windows and Unix systems. Rational Rose, a set of visual modeling development tools that uses unified modeling language (UML) technology to combine modeling and development environments, now gives users the ability to model and deploy J2EE applications directly to Java-based application servers.

IBM has also sought to capture software developers by launching a new set of development tools centered on the WebSphere middleware platform. WebSphere Studio Application Developer is built on Big Blue's open-source software, Eclipse, and offers development environments for J2EE and other Java versions, while WebSphere Studio Site Developer, also featuring Eclipse, supports development of Web services around enterprise JavaBeans (EJB).

Oracle, an IBM rival in Redwood Shores, Calif., is also upping its commitment to Java. At Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco last November, the software company introduced its second release of Oracle 9i AS, a J2EE application server that features new EJB clusters. Oracle also unveiled the new JDeveloper product, which offers a single integrated development environment for J2EE-based Internet applications and Web services. Oracle chairman and CEO Larry Ellison says Java is still building momentum in the market, despite a struggling tech industry, and pulling away from competing software architectures such as Microsoft's .NET.

"All the enterprise software companies are J2EE-compliant now," Ellison stated at Comdex. "I can't think of a single one that is .NET-compliant."

Web Services Wave

While Web services and Java aren't mutually exclusive,except with Microsoft,XML Web services has grown into its own development-tools market. When Microsoft dropped Java support after a lengthy dispute with Sun Microsystems, the software giant made XML its bread and butter for .NET.

"The pioneering software developers are now seeing what XML Web services can do," said Microsoft chairman Bill Gates during Comdex. "It's not about rip and replace. You can take existing applications and put XML capabilities on top of them."

While .NET has been mired in murky tech talk and abstract concepts of software as a service, Microsoft may yet find

a home with its XML Web services platform, thanks to Visual Studio .NET. The product was designed to enable developers to build applications that are .NET-

compatible and can also be offered as Web services.

Chicago-based Click Commerce has joined Microsoft by basing its software on the .NET Web services platform through Visual Studio .NET development tools. Click Commerce 4.3, a software suite for channel and partner relationship management, allows companies to publish catalogs on a UDDI directory as a Web service for customers, for example.

"We rewrote the applications using the .NET languages, such as C Sharp, ASP .NET and Visual Basic .NET, and were able to develop an astronomical amount of functionality and expose that functionality as Web services," says Sarah O'Donnell, senior director of product management at Click Commerce. "Customers can pull catalog data directly into their systems without having to use

an integration product or the burden of on-site hardware."

Eyeing XML

Other software makers are riding the XML wave with development tools. Last summer, Palo Alto, Calif.-based TIBCO Software introduced XML Transform, an enterprise development platform for creating and managing stylesheets through the XML language,extensible stylesheet language transformation (XSLT). TIBCO also offers two other products for developers: XMLCanon/Developer manages the development and deployment of XML assets using a Web-based interface, while TurboXML is an integrated development environment for XML that can create and convert XML schemas, which are languages used to define the content of XML documents.

Excelon, a data-management software vendor based in Burlington, Mass., recently revamped its product strategy and launched new software to capitalize on the growing market for XML development. The eXcelon XML platform features a services-based framework for building and deploying business processes and solutions through XML. The platform's Common Business Services Suite consists of development kits for business processes that are compatible with Web services--based architectures.

"If you filter out all the hype about XML, what you really need is the

ability to put XML-based data into a software architecture," says Satish Maripuri, COO of eXcelon. "We're seeing a maturity of technology standards like XML and an adoption of Web services-based software architectures."