In what it describes as a response to its customers concerns surrounding Web services security and interoperability, Systinet will announce later this week the availability of WASP 4.6 for Java. The Cambridge, Mass.-based company’s platform (which stands for Web Application and Services Platform) targets both independent software vendors (ISVs) and enterprise users looking to deploy Web services.
Key features of the new version, according to Charlie Ungashick, senior director of product marketing at Systinet, include support for the recently ratified SOAP 1.2. Ungashick said that WASP 4.6 is one of the first products to fully support SOAP 1.2 and was “the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) reference platform for 1.2.”
WASP 4.6 also supports the WS-Security specification, which is an offshoot of a specification for message-level security submitted by IBM and Microsoft. Using XML encryption, “it ensures security for content, not just the channel as is the case with Secure Socket Layers (SSL),” Ungashick said.
The new version also supports event-based mechanisms for invoking Web services asynchronously, which is designed to eliminate the need for developers to write code for complex Web services requests and responses. “We’ve all seen the shortcomings of synchronous Web transactions. It’s one way, you click twice and your credit card is billed twice,” Ungashick said. With asynchronous communication, there’s “more intelligence built into the process. There’s more about the transaction under the covers.”
WASP 4.6 also supports SOAP attachments over DIME and improved security alerting and logging with a programmable alerting mechanism for handle security related events and offers improved support for Java APIs (JAX-RPC, JAXM and SAAJ).
Ian Bruce, Systinet’s vice president of marketing, said that while the Java version will be available this week, the C++ and UDDI versions will be available in July and late August, respectively.
Ungashick added that Systinet has seen a lot of demand for the Java version from ISVs. However, overall — when you include end-user customers — it’s about a 50-50 split between the Java and C++ versions. “About 80 percent of our customers use both.”
The UDDI version is also becoming increasingly popular, Ungashick said. “They [enterprise] need to be able to catalogue what’s available behind the firewall.”
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