­Lutris EAS 4 Enterprise: 
A Web of Services
Ô

J2EE, Web and Wireless Services

Lutris EASÔ is an extensible Java/XML Internet application server that supports J2EE, Web, and Wireless Services. Lutris EAS and its Services Architecture gives ISVs, VARs, SIs, and OEMs a new level of flexibility, extensibility and scalability for successful enterprise Java applications that are created using any combination of these platform services.

Lutris EAS offers a Web of Services, built upon the modular Services Architecture pictured at right. The Services Architecture supports a broad range of technologies that enterprise applications require, from J2EE services (JNDI, EJB, etc.) to Web Services (using SOAP, ebXML, etc.) to Wireless Services (J2ME, WAP, Location, etc.).  Each of these collections of services are implemented as plugable platform services within the Services Architecture, enabling ISVs, VARs, SIs, and OEMs the ability to tailor the application server to their application, rather than attempting to transform their application to meet the constraints of application server.  Further, ISVs, SIs, and VARs have the freedom to innovate new platform services such as Schedulers, Workflow, Listeners, and Alerter services to easily enable business processes that are not easily expressible in the EJB/J2EE programming model yet still share in the transaction, security, and management services of J2EE.

At JavaOne 2001, Lutris is demonstrating the ease with which ISVs, VARs, and SIs can take any existing code, such as SOAP, and quickly import that code into the Lutris EAS application server as a platform service.  The benefits to offering this plug-able architecture is that code that behaves as a horizontal facility to other applications, such as SOAP, needn’t be replicated within every application that makes use of it.  Rather, horizontal facilities may be integrated as part of the application server itself, alongside the other platform services of Lutris EAS, such as EJB, JMS, etc.  This approach is dramatically different from other commercial approaches, in that rather than forcing ISVs, SIs and VARs to write applications, Web Services or Web Service-enablers like SOAP on top of J2EE APIs, Lutris EAS makes it easy to extend the platform to offer these services alongside J2EE.  This approach results in three key benefits:

1.       A far more manageable platform, since the SOAP platform service (indeed any custom service) is instantly manageable by Lutris’ JMX-based Management Console

2.       A far more dynamic platform, since developers aren’t limited to the capabilities of the request/response programming model of J2EE

3.       A more efficient platform, since every platform service within the Lutris Services Architecture can run within a single JVM, and thus benefits from shared common resources and from intra-VM calls rather than expensive inter-VM calls using RMI 1


The Lutris EAS Services Architecture in Action – A Stock Ticker Web Service

Web Services are intended to provide an easily accessible means of assembling and extending Internet applications.  As such, they provide a specific functionality, and are increasingly expected to expose that functionality using a standard protocol, SOAP.  SOAP serves the Web Service not unlike an XML-specified Remote Procedure Call (RPC), and allows for disparate applications potentially using different programming languages on different operating systems the ability to easily interoperate.  The canonical Web Service sample used by many companies is a simple Stock Quote Web Service, which takes as an input a stock symbol, MSFT and returns as an output the current price of that stock, 3.25 [each wrapped in a SOAP envelop].  Lutris engineers used this canonical Web Service example to demonstrate a superior approach to Web Service development and add a wireless flavor with Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME).

The first step to superior Web Service development was to decouple from the Stock Quote Web Service its function [receiving a ticker and returning a value] versus its communication protocol [SOAP].   As mentioned above, the reason for componentizing in this fashion was to allow many different Web Services to share a single SOAP platform service, and as a result of this componentization have superior time to market of new Web Services, superior lifecycle management of the Web Service [so that as new versions of SOAP are standardized, the Web Services that depend upon SOAP for communication remain unaltered], and superior performance [since redundant resources such as the SOAP code are not repeatedly loaded with every new Web Service that is deployed]. The net results of this modification in the demonstration were the independently manageable SOAP platform service and Stock Quote Web Service that you see in the demo. 

The second step of the development was to create a meaningful client to access the Stock Quote Web Service.  Lutris engineers decided to create a cell phone client, using J2ME/MIDp and kSOAP, a J2ME/MIDp implementation of SOAP included with Lutris EAS.  The cell phone client, a MIDlet, allows the end user to key in a stock ticker symbol, and have returned to them the current price of the stock.  Using kSOAP on the J2ME-enabled cell phone allows for the phone to contact any number of different Web Services providing a Stock Quote function, and thus empowers the user to choose whatever Quality of Service they desire [for example, a Real-Time Quote service that would be very expensive, or a 20 minute delayed Quote service that might be free].  Indeed, both of these independent Stock Quote services may be running side by side as Web Services on the Lutris EAS server, sharing the exact same SOAP platform service as described above.

Conclusion

Thus, Lutris EAS offers the fastest path to authoring sophisticated J2EE, Web, and Wireless Services and applications. Lutris’ Services Architecture gives developers the freedom to innovate, and to transform the platform to meet the needs of their business application, rather than restrict their application to conform to a fixed platform.  In this manner, Lutris EAS enables an ISV, VAR, SI, or OEM to easily create either a customized server for embedding in network appliances, for example, or a full J2EE implementation extended with SOAP, ebXML, or other eBusiness enabling Web Services.

1Any combination of services may be split across any number of JVMs as desired by the developer

Contact Information

Lutris Technologies, Inc.

1200 Pacific Avenue, Suite 300 Santa Cruz, CA 95060

U.S. toll free 877-688-3724

International +1-831-460-7590

Lutris Technologies UK, Ltd.

Regus Building, 54 Clarendon Road

Watford, Herts WD1 1DU, UK

tel +44-1923-431669 

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