Cape Clear Adds UDDI Features to Developer Tools
- By Matt Migliore
- 10/18/2001
Cape Clear Software reluctantly joined the UDDI movement this week, announcing the addition of a private registry and UDDI Web browser as key elements of the latest releases of its Web services products, CapeConnect and CapeStudio.
CapeStudio, a rapid application development environment for Web services, now comes equipped with a Web browser that allows developers to search for services in both public and private registries. The new searching mechanism is designed to work along with a UDDI server Cape Clear has integrated into its Web services platform CapeConnect.
“[The UDDI server] is really something our customers wanted,” says Annrai O’Toole, executive chairman for Cape Clear. “As they were building more and more Web services, they needed some way to manage them all.”
Still, O’Toole says he’s not convinced UDDI is as valuable to Web services developers as many have made it out to be. “I’m generally a bit skeptical about this whole [UDDI] thing around Web services and the anonymous discovery of services,” says O’Toole. However, he believes it does have some worth internally for facilitating existing business relationships. “Right now today, what we’re seeing customers use Web services for is internal integrations,” says O’Toole.
The UDDI server Cape Clear has added to CapeConnect reflects O’Toole’s feelings about UDDI and is designed solely for internal use. It is not for listing services outside the firewall. And while CapeStudio’s new UDDI Web browser can search listings in other registries, O’Toole says it was designed primarily with CapeConnect’s UDDI server in mind.
In addition to support for the UDDI 1.0 specification, Cape Clear has brought its technology up to speed with other Web services standards, including SOAP 1.1 and WSDL 1.1. It has tested for SOAP compatibility with leading application servers, including Microsoft’s BizTalk, BEA’s WebLogic, iPlanet and IBM’s WebSphere. Oracle9i is next on Cape Clear's list for compatibility testing.
O’Toole says most customers already have heavy investments in application servers, which is why Cape Clear is working with leading vendors in this space. However, he says, CapeConnect functions as a stand-alone product as well, and can host Java-class components as Web services without the need for a separate application server.
CapeConnect now can generate Web Services from Java classes, EJB components, and CORBA interface definition language. It is fully compatible with Microsoft .NET clients and servers. Supported J2EE platforms include WebLogic Server, WebSphere, andiPlanet. Supported CORBA platforms include WebLogic Enterprise, Orbix, andVisibroker.
CapeConnect Three and CapeStudio version 1.1 are available immediately on the Microsoft Windows NT/2000, Sun Solaris, and Linux platforms, and can be downloaded at www.capeclear.com/download/.
CapeConnect Three costs $950 per developer with additional per-server deployment costs.CapeStudio costs $445 per developer.
About the Author
Matt Migliore is regular contributor to ENTmag.com. He focuses particularly on Microsoft .NET and other Web services technologies. Matt was the editor of several technology-related Web publications and electronic newsletters, including Web Services Report, ASP insights and MIDRANGE Systems.