WEB DEVELOPMENT
The updated version of IBMs free Web Services Toolkit, released last month, provides tools for Web developers to experiment with the latest Web and XML application development technologies.
IBM (along with Microsoft) is a big backer of XML Simple Object Access Protocol remote procedure call technology, and SOAP is central to Web Services Toolkit 2.3.
Technologies included are digital signature and public-key-based encryption support for SOAP messages; SOAP connectivity for IBM MQSeries message queue server and for Enterprise JavaBeans; and prototypes of Apache Axis, the next release of the Apache Software Foundations SOAP server technology, which IBM is helping develop.
The tool kit also includes lots of documentation; tools such as a graphical browser for SOAP UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) reg- istries (see screen); and an embedded version of WebSphere, the companys application server, to run some of the demos.
Web Services Toolkit is available at www. alphaworks.ibm.com/ tech/webservicestoolkit. It isnt a supported IBM product, although many of these technologies will appear in IBMs MQSeries and WebSphere products later this year.