Field Notes: Nimble Tool Kits for Lightweight Applications

By Jon Udell

May 20, 2002 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - Not every Web services tool kit can, or should, deploy the full arsenal of wizards, debuggers and application server hooks. Sometimes less is more. For Java developers, the premier lightweight Web services tool kit is undoubtedly Glue, from The Mind Electric Inc. in Addison, Texas.
One Glue user, Chris Burchett, vice president of engineering at Credant Technologies in Addison, Texas, calls the heavyweight products from IBM and BEA Systems Inc. "the kiss of death for a small start-up that wants to deliver a product this year." Credant is building a product that enforces enterprise security policies on mobile devices. A Web services interface, created with Glue, is wrapped around the policy engine to ensure that integrators can adapt it for a range of enterprise deployments. Although Credant doesn't yet push Web services to the mobile devices themselves, Glue's small footprint bodes well for such a strategy.
Another lightweight tool kit, SOAP::Lite, freeware written by Pavel Kulchenko, was just what Dave Hoover needed to solve a routine integration problem. Hoover, an Internet specialist at the American Medical Association in Chicago, was building an application to enable doctors to manage their listserver subscriptions in a centralized way. Two databases were involved: SQL Server on Windows NT and Informix on Solaris. After failing to come up with a cheap and convenient solution using Perl database drivers, Hoover says, he hit on the idea of using an instance of SOAP::Lite on each box and "was up and running really fast."

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