At OpenWorld in San Francisco last week, Oracle revealed details of a major upgrade to its Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) middleware platform. Release 3 of Oracle Application Server 10g will help companies to:

• develop and deploy applications on a grid computing architecture;
• integrate services into enterprise business processes; and
• secure and manage services, applications and data in a heterogeneous environment.

The new release introduces several new features to support high performance, scalability and high availability in a grid computing architecture. These include dynamic workload management; enhanced clustering; automated back-up and recovery; automated disaster recovery; and a new JMX-based management console.

The hot-pluggable architecture will enable ISVs to use Oracle's middleware components with their existing infrastructures or open-source development tools and runtimes. This architecture enables users to connect and extend their existing heterogeneous systems, so they can maximise their existing IT investment. The upcoming release will be certified with open source software including Spring, Apache Struts, Apache Axis, Apache MyFaces, Hibernate, Tapestry, JUnit, CVS, SubVersion, Ant, Eclipse and Log4J. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 is scheduled to interoperate with more than 128 products including middleware products such as Microsoft .NET; IBM WebSphere; IBM MQ-Series; Cisco Local Director; F5 Big IP; Checkpoint firewalls; content management; and systems management.

The new release also features support for a host of standards required to build next-generation SOAs, including WS-Reliable Messaging, WS-Security, WS-Federation, Web Services Metadata, Web Services Invocation Framework (WSIF) and REST Web Services. This release will also include a UDDI v3-compliant enterprise business services registry.

Other additions include support for single sign on (SSO) and security standards SAML 1.0 and 2.0. The new release will include enhancements to Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle Application Developer Framework (ADF), such as new usability features; comprehensive, more powerful and easy to use code re-factoring; support for Java 5.0 and J2EE 1.4; and a visual, declarative JavaServer Faces (JSF) and Struts-based development environment with an extensive library of graphical user interface components. These development tools also support the Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) 3.0 specification.

Oracle Application Server 10g is a key component of Oracle Fusion Middleware. Over 7500 market-leading ISVs, value added resellers and system integrators already use Oracle Fusion Middleware. "Oracle Fusion Middleware is a solid success story that Oracle should highlight to more people," says Capgemini's Global CTO, Andy Mulholland. "Oracle really gets the point that it's not just what you do - the Oracle Applications part - but how you do it - the Oracle Middleware part - that makes for success. Given the pressure for regular change in business today, and the need to have 'anything-to-anything' integration immediately available, it's just as important that the 'how' is easily repeatable and standards-based."

Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 is scheduled to be generally available by April 2006.