Cape Clear’s CEO and founder, Annrai O’Toole, said in an interview with ComputerWire that, Everyone else is talking about getting to SOA by writing Java code then building SOA on top of that. We think that’s backwards, so with this Editor people can design their services before they start writing code.
O’Toole said the SOA Editor provides programmers with a graphical environment that simplifies the creation of standards-based web services, which can be deployed into an SOA-based architecture. The SOA Editor offers tools for building services, including automated wizards for common development tasks, support for web services standards, tools for testing code, support for XML Schema, and documentation to help programmers get up and running.
There has been a lot of hype around the idea of SOA, the overarching goal being to assemble applications that consist of one or more web services. The advantages are said to be support for open standards, faster time to market, and ease of development and integration, particularly in heterogeneous environments.
According to O’Toole it does not initially matter what technology choice companies make, since the Editor is independent of underlying languages such as Java or Visual Basic.
O’Toole said the starting point in developing SOA services is the web services description language (WSDL) standard. Cape Clear’s SOA Editor simplifies the creation and editing of WSDL and couples those tools with standards support, wizards to simplify development tasks, and support for XML Schema, according to O’Toole.
Beyond building the fundamental services oriented architecture, developers will subsequently require Cape Clear’s Business Integration Suite, which provides a platform for the integration of applications and transactional data, or a similar platform from a rival vendor in order to actually implement their SOAs.
The SOA Editor is available immediately as a free download – it runs on Linux, Microsoft Windows, and Sun Solaris.
O’Toole said that Dublin, Ireland-based Cape Clear is seeing good take-up of its web services integration software, claiming the company tripled its sales last year and is on track to do the same again this year. He said it was too early for the company to consider an IPO, though he expects it to break into profit later this year. He claimed the company has around 200 customers, including such names as JP Morgan and Vodafone. O’Toole considers IBM, Tibco and webMethods his closest competitors.
This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire
