Looking to take the sting out of Java development, BEA Systems released code under Apache Beehive in the hopes of getting programmers to write service-oriented architecture (SOAs) applications.

Launched in May to help sway developers to and unite them against Microsoft .NET, Beehive is the donation of the company's WebLogic Workshop application framework, a development environment for BEA's run-time software, to the open source community under Apache.

The software maker also announced at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention Wednesday that Apache XMLBeans, an incubation project to help simplify Java and XML development, has been green-lighted as an official Apache Software Foundation project. XMLBeans is an XML-Java binding tool BEA submitted to Apache in September 2003.

Dave Cotter, BEA director of developer marketing, said making projects like Beehive and XMLBeans widely available through an open source group like Apache will lend customers the flexibility to curb vendor lock-in.

The free bits of code will also make SOA and J2EE (define) software development easier, something that could not be said for Java application creation in the past. SOAs, the current popular method of distributed computing, is being taken up by several companies looking to provide a more encompassing approach than Web services (define).

Cotter said users can download Beehive code from Apache and run it on the Tomcat open source application server.

Supporters of Beehive include Borland, Compuware and Eclipse, which announced a significant pro-Java development partnership with Beehive last month under a project called Pollinate in which the Eclipse framework and Beehive framework will be "bolted together," according to Cotter.

"Developers are ecstatic," Cotter told internetnews.com, noting that roughly 70 companies have written controls and extensibility software that work on the BEA platform. "Beehive is on its way to being a de facto standard for the way that apps are being created."

LATEST NEWS

UCSD Plans First Flash-Based Supercomputer
Digging Into N.Y.'s Antitrust Suit Against Intel
Analyst: Sony-Ericsson's Android Bid Is Late
Coupon Site Targets Black Friday, Cyber Monday
Microsoft Sites Up Big in Time Spent Online

In related news, BEA also said it has expanded the functionality of its developer portal with the help of content from technical publisher and show host O'Reilly Media and CollabNet.

Geared to lure new developers to Java or heighten the interest of current Java developers, the refreshed dev2dev site will now feature technical tutorials from O'Reilly that focus on BEA's software and current industry trends. The media group will also provide infrastructure for blogging, talkbacks and wikis (define).

CollabNet, a group that makes collaborative software development tools, will provide a project workspace to let programmers download code samples and build applications with tools for knowledge and communications management.