IBM Corp and Sun Microsystems Inc are working with BEA to bring BEA’s Controls, used in WebLogic Workshop 8.1, to the JCP for ratification as a standard.

Controls are pieces of functionality wrapped up in Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs) or Message Driven Beans that, when dragged and dropped by a programmer using Workshop into a Java application or web service, provides the application or web service with that functionality. Controls simplify and speed the development process.

BEA introduced Controls with WebLogic Workshop, however rivals also providing Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) platforms have criticized Controls for being a proprietary technology that locks developers and customers into BEA’s J2EE software stack.

At BEA’s annual eWorld developers’ and end-users’ conference in 2002, the company announced it would submit Controls to the JCP for ratification as a standard, but – it later emerged – did not follow-through.

BEA chief technology officer Scott Dietzen told ComputerWire, though, the company is now working to get Controls up to a more mature pre-standards level, before their submission to the JCP for ratification and use by all J2EE vendors. BEA, IBM and Sun are increasing Controls’ level of portability between J2EE containers.

Working on technology before standards submission follows a pattern recently established by IBM and Microsoft. The companies developed the WS- web services roadmap, submitting WS- specifications to standards bodies only after they had first collaborated on how the basic specification should look with one or a handful of other vendors. It was through the standards process that IBM and Microsoft invited broader industry feedback on their early work.

The approach differs from the traditional route of building a technology specification inside of the standards body first from the ground up.

News of this latest work between BEA, IBM and Sun follows collaboration between BEA and IBM, announced in December, on a common Java programming model, called Service Data Objects (SDO), and set of APIs for a work manager and timer capable of working across BEA’s WebLogic and IBM’s WebSphere application servers, that would be submitted to the JCP for ratification.

BEA and IBM said pressure from ISVs, whose applications must function on both companies’ application servers, had led to their work on SDOs and the APIs.

BEA feels the private collaboration process, ahead of standards submission, can produce a better quality of specification. The process can speed deployment of the proposed specification in products, by delivering a more thought-out first draft to a standards committee.

Dietzen criticized what he called design by committee. You get 30 vendors trying to get a Franken-standard, Dietzen said

However, ISVs who help engineer the basic draft do have a headstart on other vendors who are not involved at the beginning. Companies can either build the basic foundations into their products from the start, or it may be that technologies that find their way into a final standard already exist in vendors’ products – as is the case with Controls and BEA’s Workshop.

Companies often like to ship products that contain drafts of major specifications while that specification moves through the standards process, rather than wait for final ratification. Waiting for ratification can mean a potential delay in vendors coming to market, which can cede ground to more nimble rivals.

Dietzen said BEA and IBM are preparing other technologies for JCP standardization, but refused to go into details.

This article is based on material originally published by ComputerWire