News

Symantec To Bring Standard Approach to EJB

• By Scott Bekker
• 05/21/1999

The first part of the strategy is the EJB Universal Framework that will provide a comprehensive, efficient approach to building and deploying applications based on EJB technology. Second, Symantec will provide extensions to that framework that gives deep integration into third-party application servers. Mitchell says the first one of those will be WebLogic from BEA System Inc. (www.beasys.com).

Next the company will support Sun's NetDynamics, IBM Corp.'s WebSphere and HomeBase from Iona Technologies (www.iona.com). They will continue to support other servers in the industry that use Enterprise JavaBeans.

Mitchell explains the EJB Universal Framework comes in three parts. First there's a set of wizards and tools that generates an applet and an XML-based employment descripter. This descripter ensures generic support for deployment. Next, Symantec provides the user with hooks, controls and Java macros for deployment. Part of the framework allows the user to customize deployment. Finally, once the app is deployed, Symantec provides a "Single-View" technology to allow developers to work with distributed components and debug simultaneously across multiple mixed platforms from one console.

Mitchell says that one problem in the enterprise is you have programmers that you don't want to teach how to use each app server. "Now you'll be able to debug over different app servers in the same environment," Mitchell says.

There now seems to be a trend in the industry to standardize each vendor's Java platform since a few months ago some analysts were tagging it the next Unix: an open platform that large, greedy vendors will proprietize. Earlier this week, Sun and partners announced a testing standard for Java certification. Now, Symantec's offering looks to standardize EJB application development and deployment. "For Java programmers to come together and support one standard, it removes some of the FUD in the industry," Mitchell expounds. "It shows the Java market is maturing." -- Brian Ploskina