IBM may not run the computer business the way it used to, but it still has some market might in the glass house. On April 28, IBM gave its seal of approval to the concept of the professional web programmer with its announcement of VisualAge for E-Business, which is a collection of Windows tools that help programmers create Java-based web sites.
By Timothy Prickett Morgan
VisualAge for E-Business is an integrated set of JavaBean development tools, including IBM’s VisualAge for Java Enterprise edition, Lotus BeanMachine for Java, components from the DB2 Universal Data Base developers kit, VisualAge WebRunner toolkit technologies, NetObjects Fusion. The VisualAge for Java Enterprise edition contains Java Data Base connectivity and CICS Java External call interfaces for linking legacy data bases to new Java applications, and also provides support for Remote Method Invocation (RMI) and C++ interfaces that can glue browsers and server applications together into a single environment. The DB2 extensions in VisualAge for E-Business include the DB2 SDK for Windows as well as IBM’s Net.Data and Lotus’ Approach middleware to connect legacy data bases to web applications. The WebRunner Toolkit is a collection of JavaBean tools that allow programmers to use existing JavaBean components, create new JavaBean components or migrate Microsoft ActiveX components to JavaBeans. The VisualAge for E-Business tools also, obviously, have hooks into the Lotus Domino Go web servers IBM is selling on all its strategic platforms these days – OS/390, AIX, OS/400, NT and OS/2 – but will support other industry-standard HTTP servers as well. It will be available May 1 in English, German and Japanese; it runs on Windows NT or Windows 95 desktops and requires an appropriate TCP/IP connection to servers where Java and web applications reside. It costs $2,499. Optional SupportLine tech support for VisualAge for E-Business costs $95 per month. On the same day, IBM also announced a new and improved VisualAge team programming management tool. VisualAge TeamConnection Enterprise Server Version 3.0 provides version control, configuration management and problem tracking to help teams of programmers from bumping heads and mixing up their code as they create complex applications using the various IBM VisualAge programming tools. The new version includes support for Sun Solaris on both servers and programmer workstations – the prior version of TeamConnection was supported on OS/390, OS/2, Windows NT, AIX and HP-UX servers and Windows NT, Windows 95 and OS/2 clients. The improved management tool also provides integration for Sybase PowerBuilder and Microsoft Visual C++ and Visual Basic. At the heart of the management tools is a new application component repository, based on new IBM technology and leveraging IBM’s DB2 Universal Data Base. TeamConnection costs $3,249 on the first server it is installed on at a site and $3,149 on each additional server. SupportLine tech support ranges from $234 to $242 per month for the product, which will be available June 26. IBM will continue to support TeamConnection Version 2 until December 28.
