Fresh off of ushering
in its AquaLogic plan for more flexible computing, BEA Systems released a
new version of its bread-and-butter application server.
WebLogic Server 9.0 is the industry’s first “zero downtime” application
server, thanks to improvements to the product’s kernel code and new tooling,
said Bill Roth, BEA vice president of product marketing.
This means companies that use it to run their applications won’t miss a
transaction in case of a disruption, which is something that previous versions of WebLogic and rival application servers from IBM, Oracle and JBoss could not
guarantee.
“We focused on building out an enterprise-grade kernel, which pretty much
gives customers an environment for running their applications,” Roth said.
The revised software, which processes thousands of messages per second,
features side-by-side deployment, which enables users to
gracefully upgrade an application without application downtime or
disruption, said Roth.
Another feature is a hot patch utility, which allows users to upgrade
application servers in a cluster without disrupting the applications in it.
BEA hopes the tools will lure new customers, adding to the company’s leading
deployments on Unix and Linux systems, where it is the leader, according to
IDC.
Such features are also important for BEA’s overarching goal, which is to
provide infrastructure software that “service-enables” applications, or
transforms them into bona fide Web services
service-oriented architecture (SOA)
exchange or integrate disparate applications on the fly.
Rivals IBM, Oracle, Microsoft and a raft of other companies are working on
offering similar distributing computing environments for customers seeking
new ways to do business via their computers.
WebLogic Server 9.0 also follows BEA’s emerging trend to support
multiple programming methods. The software has a
multi-programming interface that supports J2EE 1.4, Spring and Beehive, with additional support to come in the future.
“More and more you’ll see us trying to support programming models wherever
they are,” Roth said. “For example, we will allow WebLogic applications to
better talk to legacy applications.”
Available today, WebLogic Server 9.0 will be priced at $495 per CPU. Current BEA
customers can upgrade for free.
BEA has been on a technological refresh tear of late, centered on furthering
its SOA vision for more flexible computing.
After its grand AquaLogic launch
in June, the company upgraded
its flagship Tuxedo transaction server to be more supportive for users
thinking about implementing SOAs.
