Rich Internet Applications (RIA) describe what the software development community aims to do; break out of primitive Web delivery to deliver robust functionality, exciting data visualization and 'thicker,' role-based and process-oriented user interfaces. These types of RIAs are now possible.

Further extending its leadership role in Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), BEA Systems, Inc. , a world leader in enterprise infrastructure software, today announced its ground-breaking entry into the virtualization market accompanied with an aggressive strategy and product roadmap, uniquely aimed at Java environments. The move underscores the growing industry trend of system virtualization, the bundling of software applications with optimized OS functionality to run on hardware-independent virtual infrastructure and thus the decoupling of the software from the hardware through virtualization. Analysts are predicting as much as 40 percent of new server demand to be virtualized by 2010.

A version of Web Logic Server that includes Liquid VM - a BEA-specific JVM - is on its way in the first half of 2007, says Guy Churchward, vice president and general manager of the Java Runtime Products Group at BEA.

Pop quiz: what company both doubled its annual revenue in 2006 and closed a $26.25 million round of funding? Clue: it also tracked 290,000 downloads of its RIA platform and lined up IBM, Walmart.com, H&R Block, Monster, Barclays Global and Pandora as customers. Extra clue: it also announced project 'Orbit' which will allow developers using its platform to compile into Java Mobile and run it on devices.

Fiorano Software, Inc. (www.fiorano.com), aleading provider of business process integration and messaging technologysolutions and Silicon Plains (www.sptech.com), a leading provider ofenterprise content and business process management solutions, announced astrategic Partnership to promote each others products using their partnernetwork and global offices. Both the companies will also migrate and testSilicon Plains BPM solution on Fiorano's messaging and SOA Platform toprovide end-customers a complete business process framework.

As part of this new release, the Cross-Virtualization Manager (XVM) module of Cassatt Collage becomes the first product to simultaneously support the automated management of VMware ESX 3.0, Xen 3.0, and XenSource XenEnterprise 3.0 virtual machines. In addition, Cassatt Collage 4.0 uses its new Network Virtualization Service (NVS) to work with Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) environments to dynamically configure network switches, allowing resources to be pooled and shared across networks. These new capabilities expand the Cassatt software's ability to assign a broad set of data center resources to meet service levels through user-defined policies and priorities. With this release, Cassatt can pool and control physical servers, virtual servers, application servers, and network resources, a key enabler for enterprises to adopt a utility computing model. Customers can begin using Cassatt's products without disruption to their current IT systems -- Cassatt requires no changes to existing software, hardware, systems management, or provisioning systems.

across the multiple applications and serversthat are often involved in composite SOA applications. Intersperse 6.0delivers a readily customizable user interface to provide a visual,role-based display of the wide range of information needed for managing SOAdeployments. And with this release, Intersperse 6.0 now supports Tomcatand SAP NetWeaver and offers expanded coverage for WebLogic, WebSphere,JBoss, and .NET.

SYS-CON Events (www.sys-c on.com)announced today that AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 East(www.ajaxworld.com), which will take place on March 19-21, 2007, will attract over 1,000 developers, architects, IT managers, and software professionals of every stripe who will be converging in New York City toattend the most comprehensive meeting on the most significant technology subjects of recent times: AJAX, Rich Internet Apps & Web 2.0.

B2B marketplaces facilitate efficient search and transactions by offering services such as buyer/supplier and product/services searches and transactions such as procurement and asset disposal.

Even experienced Java Web developers are often surprised by how big a leap it is to develop a portal. The simple, slick interface that end users see belies the deep power and complexity provided by commercial products like BEA WebLogic Portal. This makes it extremely challenging to diagnose performance issues when portal applications go into production.

We need your help. My team is trying to understand the demand for AJAX, in all its forms. Could you take a few minutes and answer a short survey? We're also offering an incentive. By taking the survey, you will have a chance to receive a $100 Amazon gift certificate. (BEA employees are not eligible).

Convergin announced a new partnership with BEA Systems. The two companies have integrated the Convergin Accolade Wireless Convergence Server (WCS), a state-of-the-art service interaction platform for IMS and pre-IMS 2G/3G/Fixed networks, with BEA WebLogic SIP Server, the industry?s first converged Java EE-SIP-IMS application server, for service providers to deliver seamless services across both IP and traditional legacy networks.

In this post, I will be recounting my experience with Ubuntu server 6.10, WebLogic Workshop 9.2, and REST. Note: This in no way implies support of any kind from me or BEA. This is just the personal experiences of someone who can not keep his hands off the keyboard. This also gave me an opportunity to code up some REST samples, since many customer I come in contact with ask about it.

BEA Systems, Inc. , a world leader in enterprise and communications infrastructure software, and BroadSoft, Inc., a leading provider of VoIP application software, today announced a broad-ranging strategic alliance. This alliance includes joint development, sales, and marketing of solutions that will integrate the BroadSoft(R) BroadWorks(R) suite of VoIP applications with the BEA WebLogic(R) Communications Platform product family.

both of which are designed to support fluid, next-generation Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs).

BEA Systems, Inc. , a world leader in enterprise infrastructure software, today announced JRockit(R) Mission Control 2.0, the latest version of the most advanced tool for monitoring and optimizing application behavior at the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) level. Using JRockit Mission Control 2.0, enterprises can achieve the performance and reliability required to run mission-control applications on a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) through precise metering with the core infrastructure.

Even though I write for SYS-CON, I've never publicly complimented them. But this time they really deserve a credit. SYS-CON will present the AJAXWorld 2007 Conference & Expo 2007 East in March. Usually, attendees have very limited access to speakers during conferences, and SYS-CON Events came out with a simple but smart idea - yesterday they have created an Ask The Faculty Forum, where anyone can post questions to the conference speakers and faculty. And you do not even have to attend the conference to participate in this forum. It's a very nice idea, or rather 'Idea 2.0' Speakers should visit the forum and answer the questions to promote their sessions, and software developers will have a chance to correspond with well known people in the industry. Yours truly will run Adobe Flex Hands-on Workshop during this event, so feel free to post relevant questions - it does not matter if you are planning to be there or not. I'm sure, other event organizers will start copycatting SYS-CON, which is a win-win situation for everyone.

ICEsoft, provider of enterprise AJAX solutions, announced that it has become a Select Software Partner in the BEA Partner Program. ICEfaces offers features designed to optimize its support for BEA WebLogic Server, and ICESoft's project to integrate the ICEfaces package with BEA Workshop Studio will help BEA customers to not only develop state-of-the-art rich web applications using these two familiar BEA products, but also to readily deploy those applications to clustered WebLogic application servers.

Understanding the complexity of AJAX at the browser level is critical to refining and debugging rich AJAX applications that leverage Web technologies such as JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and XMLHttpRequests. Adding a third-party AJAX runtime heightens the complexity and sufficient browser tooling becomes critical when attempting to build a rich Internet application around existing libraries. The Eclipse AJAX Toolkit Framework (ATF) provides both a multi-faceted set of browser tooling features as well as support for integrating and building on existing AJAX runtimes.

At the end of each year, when SYS-CON informally polls its globe-girdling network of software developers, industry executives, commentators, investors, writers, and editors, our question is always the same: where's the industry going next year?

BEA has introduced a new integrated solution that is designed to transcend the boundaries of traditional business process management (BPM) by supporting more contextual and collaborative process needs.

Does this sound familiar? You have a domain object, perhaps for reporting purposes, that's built from a ton of JDBC queries and it takes too long to load. Nothing else happens until this object is built, so it's become a bottleneck. Even worse, each of the queries is actually well tuned, so there isn't much to gain from modifying the queries themselves - there are just too many of them. You don't want to change (or can't change) your data model, so what can be done to alleviate this problem short of a major redesign? There are several options like caching, lazy loading, resource pooling. Another worthy option would be to implement a variation of the concurrent query pattern.

BEA Systems announced JRockit Mission Control 2.0, the latest version of the most advanced tool for monitoring and optimizing application behavior at the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) level. Using JRockit Mission Control 2.0, enterprises can achieve the performance and reliability required to run mission-control applications on a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) through precise metering with the core infrastructure.

Day one of BEA World started out with the usual fanfare at a packed hall, and our Liquid Thinking video in Chinese. The master of ceremonies was Sichen Yu, one of the key technical people in China. Marcus Tsoi, the General Manager of our China business then kicked the day off by welcoming and thinking out sponsors. He then introduced Steve Au Yeung, who runs the entire APAC region for us. Steve talked about the growth in several countries in APAC, not just China, including India and others

Java 6 is has been announced on Monday. While not really a blockbuster release, it has some useful features. First, XML processing, via JAXP and JAXB are now standard. I believe that Sun is also removing some APIs for the first time. In addition, the inclusion of JSR 269 standardizes the annotation processing API, which is a validation of the metadata-driven application development model that BEA introduced to the world in 7.0. The toolable, declarative programming models for EJB, Web Services, and Pageflows, introduced by BEA, morphed into JSR 175 format in Java 1.5 SE, was quickly adopted by EE level JSRs like 181 and 220. Now the processing API for compilation has been standardized in Java 6.

A development environment typically consists of a single-server J2EE container for unit testing Web and enterprise J2EE applications. In contrast a production environment is far more likely to be a complex, clustered configuration. Problems discovered during production-level testing often require looping back to the development team for modification of the Web or enterprise application. Many of these issues can be caught earlier in the cycle by having the development team perform unit testing against a clustered environment. This tutorial presents a straightforward way for developers to try their applications in a cluster by utilizing the WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) to automatically provision applications into this environment.

BEA Systems, Inc. , a world leader in enterprise infrastructure, today announced the results of a cost and benefits survey of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) decision makers, which found that SOA is quickly evolving from pilot or departmental projects to enterprise-wide initiatives driven by chief information officers (CIOs). Nearly 50 percent of those surveyed have spent over $1 million to date on SOA, explaining why CIOs are increasingly the main sponsors of the strategy.

eSolutions BEA, provider of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and enterprise infrastructure software, has announced the launch of the BEA SOA 360º platform in the UAE during the 26th Gulf Information Technology Exhibition (GITEX Dubai 2006) which takes place at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre.

A week ago, I attempted some predictions on what Oracle would announce at OOW. I would like to review how I did. But first a few general comments. First off, what a boring conference! Not a log of news, except for Linux, and everyone including me knew it was coming. Also, from what I have heard, there was not alog of excitement in the air for the show. Too bad for Larry. Now onto a scorecard of how I did with my predictions.

Oracle OpenWorld is this week, so expect an avalanche of announcements by the company about their various efforts. OK, so the title is misleading. I admit I do not *actually* know what Oracle is going to announce, but it is not hard to figure out what's coming. Here's my top 10 list of likely Oracle announcements.

SYS-CON Events (www.events.sys-con.com) announced today that the first international 'AJAXWorld(TM) Conference & Expo' (www.ajaxworldexpo.com), taking place on October 3-4, 2006, at theSanta Clara Convention Center, California, will offer AJAXWorld University - Developer Bootcamp program. The AJAX Developer Bootcamp will take placeon Monday, October 2, 2006, one day before the conference opens.

BEA Systems has unveiled BEA Guardian Support Service, the industry's first and only patent-pending predictive and pre-emptive software support. Guardian represents a radical departure from the traditional break-fix support model employed by the enterprise software industry and is designed to potentially eliminate the burden of reactive and proactive support services.

BEA Systems has announced that WebLogic Server was named the number one application server in the soon-to-be published independent Evans Data Corporation survey titled Professionals Choice: Application Servers 2006 User Ranking. This announcement reinforces WebLogic Server?s position as the rock solid foundation on which developers can build next-generation Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs).

BEA has a broad ranging AJAX strategy. It extends across our tooling, server and portal product lines. In general, BEA views AJAX as a nascent technology, but are keen to deliver users the ability to build and use applications with AJAX attributes.

Kapow Technologies today announced that Simfy.de, a Germany-based online price-comparison web site for music downloads, is using the Kapow Web Integration Platform to collect data from online-music shops around the world so that users can locate music for the best price, and download it without any additional software.

Data Networks Corporation (DNC), an enterprise data management and business process design firm, and Everware-CBDI, a global consulting firm specializing in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), announced today they have established a business partnership to help federal government organizations successfully adopt and implement enterprise SOA strategies.

BEA Systems, Inc., a world leader in enterprise infrastructure software, has announced the release of AquaLogic Data Services Platform (ALDSP) 2.5, which provides a virtual, unified view of data regardless of its type or location within the enterprise. BEA also announced a strategic OEM relationship with StrikeIron, Inc., the provider of the largest marketplace of externally available plug-and-play Web services. The company is collaborating with StrikeIron to incorporate their OnDemand Web Services for Microsoft Excel product into the latest version of ALDSP, in order to facilitate the integration of backend data with the front office user.

ValueClick, Inc.'s, Commission Junction, a global provider of advanced affiliate marketing solutions, has announced the release of its Web services for advertisers and publishers. By offering a comprehensive Web services solution, Commission Junction is enabling its clients and third parties to develop their own applications to create unique products or consumer experiences in the CJ Marketplace.

BEA Systems has announced the winners of its Liquid Portal awards at a pre-BEAWorld conference ceremony. Cypress Semiconductor, Sony Pictures Entertainment and New Zealand?s University of Waikato were recognized for their collaborative portals connecting IT systems and business process. Portal technology continues to be a delivery vehicle for a new generation of composite applications in a marketplace driven by Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA).

BEA Systems, an enterprise infrastructure software has announced the availability of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) for Executives, the first BEA suite of SOA services for senior IT executives. This suite is designed to help empower executives to invest in SOA and lead change within their organizations by conveying the business value of SOA through BEA?s sensible approach.