JavaOne: BEA showing PHP on Java app server

BEA Systems at JavaOne will expand beyond its traditional, bread-and-butter Java base, demonstrating PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) running on the WebLogic Server application server

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"We're moving to languages in addition to Java," said Bill Roth, vice president of BEA's Workshop business unit.

A prototype will be featured, with partner announcements planned for later in the year. Also at JavaOne, BEA will announce it is working with Backbase to provide AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) to BEA customers.

BEA's PHP move was described as "moderately significant" by Shawn Willett, principal analyst at Current Analysis. BEA is recognizing that it must examine technologies beyond just what is coming out of the Java Community Process, Willett said.

BEA at JavaOne also will announce general availability of its Kodo 4 middleware, featuring EJB (Enterprise JavaBeans) 3 support. "The [EJB] spec just went final two weeks ago and we've already [got] product," Roth said. Kodo takes Java objects and puts them in a database.

"This represents a fundamental improvement in ease of use," Roth said.

EJB 3 represents a nine-year journey, Roth said. The original vision was about persistence: the ability to save a programming object to a database. The technology is applicable to any application that talks to a database, including banking, decision support, and OLTP applications.

With EJB 3, proponents sought to make persistence transparent; until now, it has been more difficult than it should be, Roth said.

But Java persistence is a "niche technology right now," Willett said.

"It’s an area where they have to keep up. Oracle's been pretty aggressive with TopLink in promoting EJB 3," Willett said. JBoss also has focused on EJB 3 with its Hibernate offering, he said.

"It's one of the things that you need, to show that you're innovating and on the cutting edge," Willett said.

Also at JavaOne, BEA is announcing a technology preview of the BEA WebLogic Server application server featuring a full implementation of EJB. The offering combines the application server with Kodo and is expected to be available by the end of the year.

Additionally, BEA will take significant portions of Kodo and provide them in an open source format to Apache, via BEA's Open JPA (Java Persistence APIs) project.

"It makes EJB 3 persistence available to anyone who wants to use it in open source," Roth said.

BEA plans to sell manageability and reliability features as well as tooling related to Open JPA. The commercial version of Kodo features tools and connectivity to WebLogic Server.

Sybase at JavaOne will release version 1.5 of WorkSpace, an Eclipse-based development platform for Sybase servers such as the company's database, data integration, data movement and replication servers.

Version 1.5 features modular pricing and packaging. "All of the different pieces of WorkSpace with the 1.5 release can be purchased as separate components," said Loren Corbridge, senior product manager at Sybase. Different components such as the enterprise modeling and database components can be assembled for a customized environment.

Also new in 1.5 is a Web application development component featuring JavaServer Faces functionality that leverages Sybase's DataWindowtechnology for visual development. Support for new Sybase servers also is featured.