Automating Java Apps

That quest has spawned many innovations, to be sure. The transition from DOS to Windows development, for example, launched revolutionary graphical tools such as Visual Basic and Borland's Delphi. The client-server era gave rise to legions of PowerBuilder devotees. And in the dawn of J2EE and .Net, integrated development environments arrived and are morphing into sophisticated work palettes, such as Microsoft's Visual Studio.Net, IBM's Eclipse and Sun's NetBeans.

As we further enter the era of the services-oriented architecture (SOA), the frenzy for Web-based applications that run in distributed fashion across many systems is bringing on a new set of development challenges and opportunities. But the bottom line remains the same for ISVs: They want tools that help ensure platform interoperability, reduce development costs and usher their applications to market faster.

"It's very tough for ISVs to compete with, for example, outsourced development overseas," says Edwin Schumacher, director of product management for Compuware's Optimal J development solution, which takes visual models of business processes and automatically generates the underlying code to execute them as an application. "We try to give them tools to automate a lot of the manual coding associated with Java so they can move faster."

Optimal J is just one of a bumper crop of tools and solutions sprouting up around the SOA movement. Vendors such as M7 and AltoWeb in the Java world, and WebPutty in the Windows space, have recently shipped products that effectively automate some of the repetitive work associated with building and maintaining applications. Veterans such as the aforementioned Compuware and Rational (now IBM) are pushing the envelope with model- and pattern-driven development that eliminates a lot of manual coding and bridges the gap between software design, development and testing. Finally, application-server giant BEA Systems has garnered kudos for the intuitive code-generation features it has imbued in its WebLogic Workshop toolset.

All of those solutions hinge on addressing some of the key pain points for midmarket ISVs. Chief among those annoyances is J2EE itself. Yes, it is robust, scalable and, for the most part, open in a way that .Net is not. But the dirty, little secret is how complex it is as a development environment.

"J2EE is great in making hard things possible, but none of it is easy," says Zak Urlocker, vice president of marketing at Cupertino, Calif.-based M7, which last month released Version 3.0 of its M7 Application Assembly Suite. "You have to write tons of code for all of these EJBs [enterprise Java beans], session beans, etc. And you need to be an expert in each particular area."

Other companies also are recognizing the productivity drain ISVs and systems integrators face in changing and maintaining distributed applications and services for themselves and their clients. AltoWeb officials say their "visual assembly" approach to building J2EE applications helps ISVs sidestep manual-coding errors that trap them in a cycle of write, test, rewrite, retest and so on.

Microsoft ISVs have their own supporting players seeking to ease development to Windows and .Net. One such company is WebPutty, which last month shipped WebPutty Application Platform 7.0, a unified development, integration and maintenance platform for Web-enabled corporate applications. The platform is aimed at helping ISVs develop for an SOA-type environment, according to company officials.

"As applications get larger and more integrated, it becomes really difficult for developers to manage all of the complexity and interdependencies," says Terry Hanold, executive vice president of market development at San Jose, Calif.-based WebPutty. Hanold contends that by enabling the WebPutty platform to manage and repair applications automatically, .Net development becomes easier.