SAN DIEGO—Microsoft Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. this week announced new versions of their Web services development solutions aimed at helping developers write more secure, reliable Web services.
At its TechEd 2004 conference here, Microsoft released Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 2.0 as an add-on to Microsoft Visual Studio .Net and the .Net Framework to help developers build and use more secure Web services. WSE 2.0 supports the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Systems (OASIS) WS-Security specification. It also supports WS-Policy and WS-SecurityPolicy, for expressing communication and security requirements; WS-Trust, for issuing and obtaining security tokens; WS-SecureConversation, for secure Web services conversations; and WS-Addressing, for identifying Web services endpoints and supporting transmission of messages.
In addition, Microsoft announced the technology preview of its BizTalk Server Adapter for WSE 2.0, which is a tool for orchestrating secure Web services and exposing business process flows as Web services, said Rebecca Dias, Microsofts Web services product manager.
Reza Wajih, manager of core e-commerce services in the global operations e-business IT organization at Hewlett-Packard Co., of Palo Alto, Calif., said the security aspects of WSE 2.0 greatly benefited his operation. In addition, he said, before the BizTalk WSE Adapter “we had to write our own front end for that. Very soon Microsoft will put us out of a job,” he joked.
Not to be outdone, Sun announced the newest version of the Java Web Services Developer Pack (Java WSDP), Version 1.4. The new Java WSDP also enables developers to more rapidly build and deploy secure and interoperable Web services. Sun said Java WSDP has had 1.2 million downloads to date, and Java WSDP 1.4 also supports the OASIS WS-Security specification, allowing developers to build reliable Web services, including XML digital signature, XML message encryption and authentication for Web services applications.
In addition, Java WSDP 1.4 supports the major Web services standards, including Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP); Web Services Definition Language (WSDL); Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI); and Extensible Markup Language (XML). And Java WSDP 1.4 has been enhanced to support the latest Web services security standards and Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) Basic Profile 1.1 with Attachments Profile 1.0. Java WSDP 1.4 will be available for download in mid-June from the Sun Developer Network site.
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