Sun Microsystems is poised to make its Java software play nicely with
Microsoft’s .NET software.
Sun said today that it is forging open source implementations of the
Specifically, Sun will implement WS*-specifications concerning SOAP-based
key Web services
interoperate with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Microsoft’s Web
services platform, formerly known as Indigo.
With the implementations, programmers will be able to work with Java
Enterprise Edition (Java EE) and WCF systems to create Web services software
that runs on disparate computing operating systems, including Sun Solaris,
Microsoft Windows and Linux.
The idea, said Joe Keller, vice president of marketing for Java Web Services
and Tools at Sun, is to “build an application that doesn’t care where it
runs.”
This philosophy goes to the heart of Web services, distributed computing
models that allow computers laced with different architectures to freely
communicate.
messaging, metadata and security, Keller said in an interview.
“It’s a set of about 13 specs that make up the list that you need to operate
at a rich level with the Communication Foundation,” Keller said. “Doing this
interoperability allows you to have the freedom of choice to implement where
you need to and not be restricted based on programming barriers.”
The executive said Sun officials are heading up to Microsoft headquarters in
Redmond, Wash., to test the specs next week.
After the specs are tested and fine-tuned, they will be deployed as software
tools and sample applications in the Java Web Services Developer Pack (Java
WSDP), expected to launch in the first half of 2006.
Keller said Sun will also make the specs available to the public through
Glassfish, the open source development project for Sun’s Java System
Application Server PE 9.
Eventually, the implementations will make their way into Sun’s Java
Enterprise System (Java ES) middleware platform.
The move is the latest — though Keller said not the last — step in
fostering interoperability between Java and .NET. For years, the competing
programming languages have caused great consternation in both camps.
The tension eased considerably in when Microsoft agreed to pay Sun
$1.95 million in April 2004 to settle patent and antitrust charges.
The competitors agreed to put aside their differences to work on creating
Web services that leverage both Java and .NET.
The first real fruit of this cooperation appeared in May 2005, when the
companies pledged to write new specifications that enable Web single sign-on
(SSO) between systems that use Liberty and WS-* Web service architectures,
and systems management between Sun and Microsoft products.
If SSO and management interoperability between Solaris and Java technologies
and Windows and .NET were the first two major bricks in the foundation, the
ability to create Web services that run across systems that use Solaris,
Windows and Linux is surely the third.
The news comes just days before Microsoft is scheduled to launch
its most important batch of products to date: SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio
2005 and BizTalk Server 2006.
