Web services outside the firewall

The results of a recent survey of software developers by Borland Software suggests that nearly half of all Web services are being deployed outside the firewall to provide business partners with an access route to company data. This finding runs counter to analyst predictions that Web services still have a long way to go before they break through the firewall.

"Currently, the perception is that Web services, whether based on .Net or the J2EE platform, have yet to break through the firewall," says Chris Purrington, MD for Borland Software. But the survey by Borland found that of 100 developers and IT directors polled, 57% are developing Web services applications through the firewall, chiefly to give third-parties remote access to enterprise data. "The adoption of Web services in Europe is more advanced than previously thought," says Purrington.

The survey also found that J2EE is the most popular Web services platform, with 38% of respondents developing in Java; and 15% of organisations were found to be using a combination of .Net and J2EE. [CBROnline]

Open source Java is on the horizon. TheRegister reports that the Java Community Process (JCP), a Sun-backed industry body overseeing development of the Java platform, have voted to alter the community`s structure, officially supporting open source implementations of Java.

The first instance of Java expected to be open sourced under these changes is the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) 1.4 platform, which Sun says is due in the first quarter of 2003.

The Apache Software Foundation, which makes the Apache Web server, is also working on ports of Java Server Pages (JSP) and servlets, according to the JCP. Apache has been a critic of restrictions at the JCP that made it difficult for open source groups to participate. Under an agreement announced with Sun at JavaOne in March, open source implementations of Java standards were permitted. [TheRegister]

The University of California at Davis announced this week it has received a grant from the US Department of Defence to build a new generation of cellphones that transmit and receive optical signals, reports ZDNet.

The optical cellphones could make wireless communications speedier and more secure than existing optical fibre networks, researchers said.

The researchers hope to build chip-sized devices that use a technology standard already in some cellphones. That technology, called Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), transmits and receives optical signals. CDMA, which runs about 20% of the world`s wireless networks, is a proprietary standard owned by Qualcomm.

A different technology in widespread use employs a method called wavelength division multiplexing, in which each cellphone uses a different wavelength of light, according to the researchers. In contrast, optical CDMA would encode each pulse, or bit of information, across a segment of wavelengths. The receiver uses a key to decode the signal and re-create the original pulse. [ZDNet]

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