WEB SERVICES TOOLS
BEA WebLogic Workshop
BEA Systems
 Leslie Tighe, Product Marketing Manager; Christina Guenier, Senior Manager, Public Relations |
BEA WebLogic Workshop 7.0 is a slick package for those in a hurry to build Web services. Workshop makes it easy to build Web-enabled applications by freeing developers from Web-specific tasks, allowing them to concentrate on writing application logic in Java. The integration of an IDE, controls and a deployment environment enables some cool functionality that greatly enhances developer productivity.
The Workshop consists of two major components: a visual Java IDE and a
runtime environment. The combination of these two elements allows for tight
integration of development, testing and deployment tasks. The development environment
enables the developer to visually connect Web services components, so you can
write your Java code using standard Java interfaces and then connect it to an
XML message component that translates the Java interface to a WSDL service.
The Workshop uses code annotation to specify how the Java interfaces are translated
to Web services. After specifying the Web services, controls and business logic,
the workshop generates the necessary infrastructure code for the XML, SOAP and
WSDL elements. Even better, it generates the J2EE runtime components required
(EJBs, JMS queues and JDBC connections), the test stubs to feed test messages
into the Web service and the test stubs to receive messages from the Web service.
—Hugh Bawtree
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M7 Application Assembly Platform
Developers using J2EE frequently encounter productivity problems related
to difficulty with code reuse, integration with existing systems and performance
problems. Many of these obstacles can be alleviated through the use of
an application assembly platform, such as M7 2.0. M7 helps isolate developers
from the complexity of integrating the underlying J2EE components by allowing
you to build applications visually from J2EE components, store them in
an object repository, and integrate them with major J2EE application servers
such as BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere and JBoss. M7 can also be used to
build Java Server Pages and Web services. —Warren Keuffel |
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SOAPscope
Frank Grossman and Jim Moskun, inventors of the classic NuMega BoundsChecker
Windows API debugging tool, retired a few years ago. Big mistake—they
soon got bored. Minds ablaze, they surfaced with SOAPscope 1.0, a unique
SOAP transaction packet network sniffer that logs packet internals to
an embedded relational database for debugging. Frank and Jim know that
logging is only half the task; thus, SOAPscope turns hard-to-read packet
data into pseudocode and XML representation from the database in real
time. To improve tracing, database packets may be richly annotated with
information such as the hyperlink that started the transaction. Further,
incorrect packets may be re-sent to their target with debugging alterations.
Another bonus: The tool is a great training environment for SOAP novices.
—Roland Racko |
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SOAPtest Not one to miss a trend, Parasoft has taken its stellar testing-tool track record and extended further with SOAPtest 1.0. SOAP may be simple, but the messages it encodes are often anything but. SOAPtest’s components work together to simplify and reduce the Web service testing effort. Depending on whether it’s testing a server or a client, SOAPtest generates a client emulator or a server emulator.
For client emulators, Soaptest automatically generates test cases and
values for each parameter in the XML message. The results are saved for
regression testing; the saved test cases help determine the average and
peak loads that the service can handle. SOAPtest also lets you develop
and customize test cases with Java, Javascript or Python. This useful
tool fits snugly into any Web service deployment effort. —Hugh Bawtree
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