Microsoft Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. are continuing to lure developers to their respective platforms with free tools for building Web services.
Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash., next month is expected to release the beta of its WSE (Web Services Enhancements) Version 2.0, a free tool kit for developers building Web services on the .Net platform. Although WSE 2.0 is yet to be released even in beta, Keith Ballinger, program manager for XML messaging at Microsoft, discussed the technology at Microsofts Tech Ed conference in Dallas earlier this month.
Ballinger said WSE is “a product that builds on top of the .Net Framework and the Web services APIs in the .Net Framework.” Microsoft released the first version of WSE in December, and the second will be released in beta in midsummer, he said.
The first version of WSE provided support for such Web services specifications as Web Services-Security, WS-Routing and WS-Attachments. Version 2.0 will add support for WS-Trust, WS-Policy, WS-SecureConversation and WS-SecurityPolicy.
WSE 2.0 also supports a new messaging model with “several programming models within the messaging bucket,” such as eventing, dialogs, monologs and multicast, Ballinger said.
In addition, WSE 2.0 offers four classes for messaging: SOAPSender and SOAPReceiver, for one-way messages, and SOAPClient and SOAPService, for one- and two-way messages.
Sun, based in Santa Clara, Calif., for its part, has been talking up its free tool kit for Web services developers, the Java WSDP (Web Services Developer Pack). The current version of Java WSDP is Version 1.2.
Mark Bauhaus, Suns vice president of Java Web Services, said at the annual JavaOne developers conference in San Francisco this month that there were more than 1 million downloads of Java WSDP over the past year.
“Free development kits play two important roles,” said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, in Cambridge, Mass. “They give developers the opportunity to work with some of the newer specifications.
“Second, these tools help companies leverage Web services to solve integration problems cost-effectively, without having to go through software purchase processes.”