B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

• CICS — another TP monitor; and
• MQSeries — IBM's popular messaging product.
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Each of these products is an independent commercial product in
itself. As might be expected, WebSphere also integrates with many
other popular IBM products, including MQSeries Integrator and Lotus
Domino. WebSphere is available on all the major operating systems,
including AIX, Windows NT/2000, Solaris, Linux, IBM OS/390 and
HP-UX. WebSphere comes with DB2 as the default database but also
supports Oracle 8i and Sybase Adaptive Server, with some effort.
Though the breadth of the WebSphere family seems impressive (and
it is), the actual integration of all these tools is not always a turnkey
operation. In a rush to provide the most comprehensive e-commerce
product line, many of these products were placed under the WebSphere
'umbrella' before full interoperability was attained. The WebSphere
application server itself has had a reputation of being difficult to install
and maintain. But IBM has deep pockets and a strong commitment to
WebSphere, so each new release has provided tighter integration and
better interoperability among the various products. And, of course,
IBM's Global Services will be more than happy to help companies out
with their integration problems.
WebSphere is also the first software platform to incorporate the
following elements to enable Web services, including:
• SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) for Java server and tools for
standard-format Web services data and communications;
• UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) for Java,
providing a set of Java APIs for interacting with UDDI registries for
Web services;
• XML (Extensible Markup Language) upgraded XML parser for better
performance and B2B communications; and
• WSDL (Web Services Description Language), a common language to
describe the capabilities of Web services.
IBM has beaten other application server vendors to the punch by
providing support for Web services within WebSphere. These new
services will help WebSphere extend the enterprise to the Web, providing
an end-to-end (or EAI to B2Bi) integration model.