IN AN ALLIANCE that analysts say will make it easier to utilize BEA's interactive development environment for Java Web services, BEA and TogetherSoft on Tuesday plan to announce availability of Together ControlCenter Accelerator Plug-in for BEA WebLogic Workshop.

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The product links TogetherSoft's ControlCenter Java modeling tool with BEA's visual Web services development framework, the companies said. Developers can develop, deploy, and test J2EE applications. Also, developers can build UML (Unified Modeling Language) models for Web services in ControlCenter that can be accessed via the server-side control framework in WebLogic Workshop.

"What this integration allows you to do is build components and the resulting Web services all from within TogetherSoft ControlCenter," said Indu Kodokula, director of business development at BEA. WebLogic Workshop is optimized for building loosely coupled, asynchronous Web services, he said. An example of a coarse-grained Web service is would be a purchase order, with the data feed from the purchase order being a fine-grained Web service, Kodokula said.

Analysts said the announcement will make it easier for development inWeblogic Workshop.

"BEA has built its own [Java] toolset, but that toolset isn't really targeted at the traditional Java developer, whereas TogetherSoft's tools are very well targeted at the traditional Java developers," said Thomas Murphy, senior program director at Meta Group, in Meta Group, of Stamford, Conn.

"The IDE from BEA is very difficult. It isn't the traditional IDE that most Java developers are used to working in, with an editor, compiler, debugger-type of tool," Murphy said. WebLogic Workshop is oriented toward Visual Basic programmers, while TogetherSoft offers a traditional J2EE development, he said.

Analyst Rikki Kirzner, research director for International Data Group, in Mountain View, Calif., said the alliance represented a "smart move" on BEA's behalf because "Workshop by itself is not that sophisticated of an IDE."

Customers have tighter integration between BEA WebLogic Platform 7.0 and ControlCenter, enabling the building and connecting of components, data and application business logic in a visual environment, according to BEA and TogetherSoft.

JWS (Java Web Services) files can be deployed directly to BEA WebLogic Server directly from within ControlCenter.

The plug-in is free to current TogetherSoft and BEA customers through the end of this year.