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Sniffing electronic commerce, IBM adorns Java with back-end features

By Ted Smalley Bowen InfoWorld Electric

Posted at 2:01 PM PT, Sep 25, 1996 IBM is accelerating its commitment to Java with a raft of Java API enhancements aimed at extending the language to run on IBM's server operating systems as well access enterprise data and security for electronic commerce.

The Armonk, N.Y. giant is working with JavaSoft and other partners to incorporate some or all of the APIs in the JDK and JavaBeans component model, and will add the resulting capabilities to its operating systems, systems management, development tool, and other software assets, officials said.

The plan to develop the API extensions, which was released internally at IBM earlier this month, could work its way into Java, the JavaBeans component model, and IBM products as early as the first half of 1997. IBM is also porting the Java Virtual Machine to MVS, AS/400, OS/2, AIX, and Windows 3.1.

IBM's efforts are geared at preserving Java's standards-based underpinnings to act as a common development language across its product line as well as an industry-wide standard, officials said.

"We are intent on working with JavaSoft in everything we do. We won't make the language any less capable of being cross-platform by adding proprietary extensions," according to Pak Mark, a solutions executive for Java tools in the IBM Internet division.

The company's systems integration APIs include those allowing other programming environments to invoke the Java Virtual Machine and Java applications, as well as native methods invocation, object persistence, asynchronous collaboration, and natural language support, according to Mack.

For enterprise data access, IBM is working on database access APIs such as native interfaces to DB2 and IMS databases as well at to its CICS (mainframe query system) transaction processing monitor and MQSeries message-queuing middleware.

Support for the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol and systems management applications are also in the works, officials said.

The company's collaboration with JavaSoft on Java security and electronic commerce includes APIs for SSL, encryption with cryptolopes, and the IBM security model, according to Mack.

"We are also interested in the Object Management Group [CORBA] security model for distributed objects," he added.

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Copyright © 1996 InfoWorld Publishing Company

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