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S N E A K P R E V I E W

BEA Cleans Up App Integration

September 4, 2003
By Don MacVittie

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During testing for a recent enterprise application-integration review, we found a multitude of problems with the EAI products: JDBC configuration was a pain, Web services support was minimal, and management consoles were too complex (see "Smooth Integrators"). BEA Systems promised to address these shortcomings in version 8.1 of its BEA WebLogic Integration, and I put the product--including its portal, application server, EAI server and Web application development toolset--to the test in our NWC Inc. labs. In addition to remedying most of the problems we pinpointed in our review, version 8.1 improves licensing by bundling database JDBC connections and file reader/writers that previously came at an additional cost.

The first enhancement I noticed is that BEA has simplified WebLogic's previously overcrowded management console. Categories are more specific, and infrequently used items have been moved to the development tool or eliminated. BEA has also created JDBC connection wizards. I had some problems with the interface, however, and had to install open-source driver MySQL before the wizards could generate connections. This is necessary for all JDBC connections, even ones that use JDBC drivers provided by BEA. Installing the JDBC was a pain, but it was much easier overall than the old way of configuring each JDBC parameter by hand.

Good

• Easy JDBC configuration
• Enhanced Web services support
• Built in WS-Security support
• "Global" app-level resources

Bad

• JDBC drivers--even those shipped with the product--must be installed
• You pay for the corporatewide platform, whether you need it or not

BEA WebLogic Integration 8.1, $62,000 per CPU. BEA Systems, (800) 817-4BEA, (408) 570-8000. www.bea.com/products

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Advanced Services

BEA has turned the corner on the usability front, offering simple pages or wizards for most common management functionality. I could configure users rapidly using the default security provider and security groups. In addition, WebLogic can retrieve your authentication information from just about any data source, including a database, Microsoft Active Directory and OpenLDAP. Adding users, groups and roles was also simple.

BEA may be ahead of the crowd in providing tools for the creation of Web services, including support for WS-Security and click-to-create Web services. Add to that its enhanced support for Web services application development, SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) 1.2 and UDDI support, and BEA is a force to reckon with among the EAI and application server crowd.

Covering Many Bases

You'll pay more for WebLogic 8.1 than for many other integration packages, but you'll get a lot in return. If you have a portal, an application server, an EAI server and BPM (business-process management) tools that use these products, or if you write Java applications and make Java your corporate standard, WebLogic can replace all of these with a set of integrated applications that use a single user interface. I employed one set of tools to generate projects for portal interface, static and dynamic Web pages, and EAI. Additionally, WebLogic supports almost every Java standard.

Don MacVittie is an application engineer at WPS Resources. Write to him at dmacvittie@nwc.com.

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