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Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced that the Sun ONE integrated product portfolio continues to support emerging web services and XML standards, including SOAP. As a result, Sun ONE customers can develop web services with XML support that is interoperable with other standards-based services, regardless of their underlying platform.

The Java technology will provide Sun ONE with open, cross-platform support for SOAP and other key web services standards. SOAP is the simple object access protocol, an industry standard now being defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It defines how applications communicate with one another on the network, a fundamental feature for networked services on demand. Sun ONE includes the vision, architecture, platform and expertise for developing and deploying services on demand today -- from the Solaris Operating Environment and Forte tools to Java, as the applications and services development platform, to the entire stack of iPlanet products.

"The Java platform is a fundamental foundation for the Sun ONE architecture and brings key differentiators to Sun ONE: support for open industry standards and the ability to integrate easily with other software products," said Rich Green, vice president and general manager, Java and XML Software, Sun Microsystems. "As standards are defined for the next generation of networked services -- what we call services on demand -- Sun ONE will have a comprehensive set of industry standards-based capabilities to offer."

Web services standards, such as SOAP, are still being defined, but developers can use a variety of interim implementations available from several sources, such as the Apache Project, Cape Clear or tools vendors. Vendors can also write native support into their products. The Sun ONE products and the Java platform currently utilize this model. Ultimately, the individual products that make up the Sun ONE family will utilize common implementations of XML and other web services standards as they are created by the Java Community Process(SM) (JCP), including support for SOAP and XML processing.

The JCP program has completed and released the JAXP API specification to support XML processing and parsing. The Java API for XML Messaging (JAXM), which is nearing completion by the JCP, will provide SOAP support to the iPlanet Message Queue product, which in turn provides SOAP support to iPlanet Application and Integration Servers and other Sun ONE products that are implementations of Java technology. The iPlanet Integration Server today includes a native implementation of SOAP. iPlanet Message Queue is a high performance 100% Java Message Service (JMS) implementation message oriented middleware product.

Additional JCP Expert Groups, comprised of representatives from multiple member companies, have formed as part of the JCP program to develop the additional APIs that will provide Java platform support for communication to registries and repositories, such as UDDI and ebXML; remote procedure calls and data binding. All are all important capabilities for the services on demand that the Sun ONE product portfolio provides.

At the same time, JAXM and the other JAX APIs are being integrated into key application development tools from companies such as Borland Software Corporation, Oracle Corp. and WebGain, Inc., as well as Sun's Forte Tools group.

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