Cloudscape, WebLogic Ally for Developers
The future of enterprise application development is looking to be a componentized one, as ISVs and application developers alike look to usher in an era of reusable components interchanged through an object request broker or application server architecture. A recent collaboration between Cloudscape Inc. (Oakland, Calif.,
www.cloudscape.com), manufacturer of Java-based database management software, and WebLogic (San Francisco,
www.weblogic.com), a publisher of Java application server software and Java-to-database integration software, is designed to provide application developers with a one-stop shop for all of their component needs by facilitating a transactional component infrastructure that includes both integrated database and application server tiers.
Cloudscape produces the Cloudscape embeddable Java SQL database, a portable database manager written in 100% Pure Java that is designed to be embedded within applications as a local data manager. WebLogic’s Tengah is an extensible application server based on Java technology that can be leveraged for assembling, deploying and managing networked applications. In addition, Tengah provides an implementation of the Enterprise JavaBeans 1.0 component specification. Each company will market the other’s product.
But the Cloudscape/WebLogic partnership isn’t specifically limited to the joint marketing of each vendor’s respective flagship product. In addition to the integration effort, Cloudscape announced that it has embedded Tengah technology in its multiuser Cloudscape Java database management system (JDBMS). Accordingly, WebLogic has bundled the embedded Cloudscape Java SQL database in its Tengah evaluation edition, which is available to prospective Tengah customers on the WebLogic Web site. Customers who buy the full version of Tengah, however, must buy Cloudscape’s product separately.
By ensuring integration between the two products, WebLogic and Cloudscape customers can deploy applications based on Java technology over WebLogic’s Tengah application server and leverage the data management provided by Cloudscape’s Java SQL embedded database. Conversely, the Tengah technology embedded into Cloudscape’s JDBMS also provides customers with the ability to make remote JDBC calls from a networked client application and offers remote access to the Cloudscape JDBMS using HTTP or HTTPS.
According to Malcolm Colton, vice president of marketing with Cloudscape, the WebLogic/Cloudscape partnership is driven by the necessary vicissitudes of componentized application development in the enterprise today. "WebLogic and Cloudscape support the new way applications are being built today: out of components that readily integrate with one another," Colton says. "Our customers are already using the integrated products to build high-performance, server-based applications based on the Java platform."
One such customer is Temple Games Inc. (Providence, R.I., www.templegames.com), a developer of commercial online communities and interactive multiplayer games for the Internet.
Temple Games is using the Cloudscape and Tengah products for the server portion of its interactive gaming and community applications. Temple Games’ forthcoming MatchRace VR, due in late fall, will leverage Cloudscape’s Java SQL embeddable database to maintain subscriber, membership and multiplayer game information. The database will also be used to assist in community interaction through chat and to help keep members of the community together. Login, game selection and game statistics are coordinated through Java servlets that communicate with the Tengah server and the Cloudscape database.
Jonathan Brown, president of Temple Games, says that the Cloudscape/WebLogic pairing is a good fit for Temple Games’ application development infrastructure. "The portable, lightweight Cloudscape data manager and the Tengah application server allow us to manage our distributed, dynamic community and maintain a high-performance application environment," he says.