22 March 2002 IBM and Sun Microsystems are expected to unveil a number of enhancements to their respective web services strategies at next week’s Java One developer conference.

The updates are intended to make it easier to build, deploy and integrate web services built with their web services tools.

IBM’s enhancements are based on the idea of enabling developers to be able to build web services that can pull data from various different sources. This process can be saved as a workflow and re-used by other developers that need to incorporate that process within their applications.

IBM says that it will make it easier to build such web services by offering a drag-and-drop interface with the latest version of its WebSphere Studio developer tool. This will enable users to link the web services they are building with system applications at the click of a mouse.

The company will also include the universal description, discovery and integration (UDDI) registry free with the latest version of the WebSphere application server.

Sun’s iPlanet software subsidiary is also expected to unveil a number of enhancements to its web services architecture. It plans to eliminate its much-criticised silo architecture and improve integration capabilities.

A number of other upgrades are also planned to the iPlanet Integration Server and the iPlanet Portal Server. Integration Server will feature a web services description language (WSDL) import facility so that it can be used to integrate with web services. It will also include more support for integration with XML.

At the same time, iPlanet is expected to announce the incorporation of Java connector architecture (JCA) technology into Portal Server. This will enable Portal Server to connect more closely with applications built around Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) standard application servers.