Joe Mitchko

Last year, BEA introduced WebLogic Workshop, a revolutionary product based on declarative annotations that took away most of the pain and aggravation of developing J2EE-based Web services on the WebLogic Application Server platform. Not being satisfied with just Web services, BEA extended this technology with Workshop 8.1 to include Web applications, portals, and other J2EE integration-based applications. New Features For development of loosely coupled applications that can maintain their public contract while underlying data structures change, WebLogic Workshop 8.1 now includes support for XML Schema and XQuery Mapping. Based on the XQuery XML standard, the visual mapping tool allows you to map XML elements to Java data elements by simply performing point-and-click operations. In addition to straight one-to-one mapping, you can also use a number of built-in XQuery... (more)

If Only...

Rarely does a software product meet the expectations of each and every user. First of all, if it did, I guess there wouldn't be any need for further releases. We all have a wish list of sorts - if only this software program could do this or if only that could be better. Most of the time, you just grin and bear it, keep such thoughts to yourself, and accept the way it works until the next release. If only I had just a little clout to have the vendor design the software exactly the way I want it... At this point, you can probably sense where I'm heading with all this, so without f... (more)

BEA WebLogic Workshop

To fully appreciate the power behind Workshop, you need to know a bit about Java Web Services (JWS), an up-and-coming standard in the J2EE world. Just as you can embed Java code in a JSP file and have it compile on the application server, Java code in a JWS file is compiled automatically into a Web service. JWS allows you to take standard method calls in a Java class and, by adding one or more Javadoc-based annotations, instruct the Web application server to expose the method as a SOAP-based Web service. Workshop allows you to map an XML element in the SOAP message to a specific m... (more)

Quadrasis/Xtradyne Soap Content Inspector

They carefully planned for days for the worst possible attack. Once their presence was detected, the enemy's agents, who were stealthy and highly intelligent, would surely be drawn to their defensive walls. It would only be a matter of time before the ongoing and relentless probing would begin, eventually finding some unknown and unforeseen weakness in its design. Once compromised, the walls would surely be breached and the eventual plundering and destruction would spell doom for the innocent inhabitants within. Instinctively they knew not to underestimate the dark and ever-prese... (more)

Now I See the Problem

(July 21, 2003) - Just a few short years ago, I had my first experience with Web service technology while employed by a Silicon Valley dot-com company. At the time, the new technology seemed to me to be more like a solution looking for a problem. All right, you can use XML for remote procedural calls, but so what? I can specifically remember working on an advanced financial reconciliation engine, where the lead engineers on the team proposed that SOAP be used to interface the engine to the remaining J2EE based services. It seemed to me to be somewhat of an overkill, especially si... (more)