News
CA Certifies J2EE Tools
Java applications servers are frequently cited as agrowing market in a dismal industry, but little attention is paid to tools forsupporting J2EE. Computer Associates International Inc. hopes to close the gapby having Sun-endorsed tools on the market.
CA said Sun Microsystems Inc. certified two of itstools as J2EE-compliant. J2EE is a set of standard libraries for creatingbusiness logic applications with prefab components to perform common servertasks. J2EE-compliance indicates a tool is fully compatible with the standards Sunset out.
Sun certified two tools, COOL:Joe, an Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) rapid development tool, and Unicenter Web Management Solutions,part of CA’s Unicenter network management framework. Don LeClair, vicepresident of research and development at CA, says while CA sees no opportunityfor another J2EE server, it believes the management market for J2EE is destinedto grow. “We look to manage everything,” he says.
LeClair believes customers will benefit fromSun-certification in a number of ways. First, when a product is certified for aparticular version of J2EE, customers can be assured that it will be completelycompatible with that version. LeClair says CA has established a partnershipwith Sun to update products as new versions of J2EE are released. “Customerscan be sure we are up on standard which rapidly change,” he says.
Unicenter’s certification offers one particularadvantage to customers: “You don’t have to rewrite your EJBs to make themmanageable,” LeClair says. Because the software is fully compliant any and allEJBs written to standard can be monitored through Unicenter. Unicenter canmonitor the application server in addition to the applications running on it.
Although CA is not considered a heavy hitter in theJava marketplace, it offers a variety of enterprise-grade Java products. Inaddition to COOL:Joe and Unicenter, CCC Harvest, its lifecycle management tool,and the Jasmine integration server both have J2EE support.
–ChristopherMcConnell