Only one day after announcing a new Web services security specification, IBM on Friday rolled out new security features in its Web Services Toolkit that support the specification.
IBMs Web Services Toolkit (WSTK) 3.1, which is now available for a free trial download on IBMs alphaWorks site at www.alphaWorks.ibm.com, provides implementations of the SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) Security Token and Digital Signature components of the WS-Security specification that IBM jointly announced with Microsoft Corp. and VeriSign Inc. on Thursday. The companies also jointly developed the WS-Security specification to help organizations build secure, interoperable Web services applications. The SOAP Security Token indicates the message senders properties, including name, identity, credentials and capabilities
IBMs WSTK 3.1 includes Web services-related technologies from various IBM development and research labs and features IBMs Business Explorer for Web Services, a WSDL (Web Services Description Language) Explorer, Web services management and a buyer-seller Web services demo.
The Business Explorer for Web Services is an XML-based UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) exploring engine that enables developers to perform complex searches in multiple UDDI directories using a single query request. The Armonk, N.Y., company said by aggregating results from multiple UDDI queries and processing the intersecting information from those searches, the Business Explorer for Web Services could help speed the development of Web services applications.
The WSDL Explorer is a browser-based tool that generates an automatic user interface to help users examine WSDL documents to understand, discover and invoke available Web services, the company said.
IBM also provides a Java Management Extensions-based (JMX) systems management interface, including a JMX server that tracks Web services statistics. And the buyer-seller Web services demo illustrates the use of Web services in an end-to-end transaction to buy electronics components, IBM officials said.
IBMs WSTK 3.1 runs on Linux, Windows XP and Windows 2000 operating systems.