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Despite a year of buzz and hoopla surrounding Web services technologies, the challenges of application development are still the biggest source of friction in the gears of enterprise IT. The finalists and winner in this category illuminate the long-established demands and the newly emerging pressures on development professionals.
WINNER
WebSphere Studio 5.0
IBMs WebSphere Studio 5.0 unites new and legacy technologies and builds an important bridge to open-source flexibility through the Eclipse initiative. In addition to letting developers write and compile COBOL from within its environment, WebSphere Studio sets a high standard for working with Java technologies: It gives developers the tools to make effective use of such productivity frameworks as Struts and Swing, to package logic in Enterprise JavaBeans, and to deploy their work in servlets and JavaServer Pages. The product continues in the tradition of IBMs VisualAge tools with its facilities for code maintenance as an integral part of the process.
FINALISTS
DeKlarit 2.0
Category judges found hope of solving some of their most pressing problems of database and business logic consistency as they examined ARTechs DeKlarit 2.0 entry. DeKlarit is a .Net-based tool set that generates and maintains database schema (for SQL Server or Oracle) and associated code (in either C# or Visual Basic .Net). DeKlarits Business Components provide abstraction from database implementation, enabling access to computed values in the same manner as stored values. Business Component definitions can also include data validation rules. DeKlarits Data Provider objects encapsulate data retrieval tasks, enabling developers to specify whats needed while letting DeKlarit generate and maintain code.
iWay Security Exchange 1.0
Application integration drives many enterprise IT investments, offering the promise of dramatic returns but also involving error-prone interactions among different data formats and access control rules. Offered by iWay Software, a unit of Information Builders Inc., iWay Security Exchange 1.0 combines iWay and IBM tools that offer both “push” and “pull” information access and delivery across organizational boundaries. The product does all this with minimal custom code and without error-prone patchworks of exceptions to existing systems security rules. Graphical integration tools, plug-ins and a library of more than 200 information adapters maximize access to common information formats, while a real-time integration engine for XML and other document formats enables powerful data-fusion processes.
Excellence Awards Winners and Finalists: