Tools players eye cross-platform Web services

WITH THE RELEASE of Visual Studio.Net on Wednesday and several new tools from Microsoft competitors throughout the early part of this year, cross-platform Web services has been a significant concentration point.

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Microsoft, for its part, will unveil the long-awaited Visual Studio.Net toolbox at the VSLive developer conference in San Francisco.

Inside this incarnation of Visual Studio is the CLR (Common Language Runtime), with which developers can write applications in any one of more than 20 languages and then run them on the .Net platform.

"Vendors [have to] provide their customers with choice to use the most appropriate language for the development project," said Kathy Quirk, an analyst at Hurwitz Group, in Framingham, Mass.

Quirk added that by enabling developers to use multiple languages, tools can make it easier to bring legacy code into Web services.

Visual Studio.Net is the culmination of several moves made by major players to offer tools that enable developers to tap into various programming languages when building Web services and to make Web services work on a variety of platforms.

Borland last week, for example, took the lid off C++ Builder 6, with a bent toward Web services.

"Borland's Web services strategy is about bridging the gap between the two worlds of Windows and Unix. With our C++ tools, you'll be able to create cross-platform applications," said Alison Deane, senior director of product marketing at Borland, in Scotts Valley, Calif.

When used with Borland's Kylix platform and Delphi tools, C++ Builder allows developers to build applications or Web services on Windows, move it over to Linux, recompile, and then run that application on Linux, according to Deane.

Earlier this month, Sun also kicked up its cross-platform strategy with an early release of the Forte Developer 7 suite. Using Forte Developer 7, programmers can pull C, C++, and Fortran applications into Sun ONE (Open Network Environment), Palo Alto, Calif.-based Sun's Web services environment.

"The world of the Web exists with quite a bit of Java and quite a bit of Windows. Developers have to have a way to communicate between Windows, Java, and Unix," said Rikki Kirzner, an analyst at IDC, a Framingham, Mass.-based market research firm.