ICEsoft - Newsletter May 2004


	June 2004

This issue includes some compelling articles on Java and Rich clients. For example, the Nexaweb XCS Platform article provides an interesting discussion XML evolution, leveraging Java. A number of ICEsoft customers have spoke about the need for a hybrid strategy allowing developers to maintain their current Java investment while evolving to next generation Rich GUI’s. The Browser Wars article provides guidance on the client platform and why you won’t need to default to Longhorn. Lastly, ICEsoft gets to blow its horn a little with the SD Times Tornado article. It high-lights some of our experiences from the client side of the J2EE web application market.

With JavaOne only a few weeks away, ICEsoft is busy getting ready. We’ll have a booth there along with a number of the partners and customers, mentioned in these articles. ICEsoft will be situated near the front entrance, next to Borland and Oracle. Come on by and we will fill you in on where we are going with our platform, as well as give you a hint on our evolution with Rich Media and next generation browsers. We can also give you a look at our newest release, Java PDF SDK. Due to the significant customer interest, we’ve introduced it as a Beta release, just click here.

In This Issue
BEA to release Apache Beehive: Workshop Open Sourced Java Tools: The Next Battleground SOA’s: Defining the Integration and Orchestration of Services? BEA Announces Liquid Computing Strategy at eWorld 2004 Puzzling Plethora of Proffered Protocols ICEsoft Spun Out of the Tornado Nexaweb XCS Platform: XML Client/Service and Java Platform Take on .NET Smoke, Mirrors and Silence: The Browser Wars Reignite Microsoft behind $12 million payment to Opera ICEsoft Announces the Release of ICEpdf
Web Applications
	BEA to release Apache Beehive: Workshop Open Sourced BEA is expected to announce that they were open sourcing major parts of their BEA WebLogic Workshop tool-set. The open source product is code-named "Beehive" and will be part of Apache. Rumor is that the parts being open sourced are the Controls, and Page Flows, and Metadata for Web Services. XMLBeans is already open of course. Read more at http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=26022
	Java Tools: The Next Battleground Five months after the Java Community Process approved version 1.4 of the Java 2 Enterprise Edition specification, Sun Microsystems Inc. held a “kickoff” event to highlight community support for the new spec. It also pointed out the next Java battleground: tools. Read more at http://www.sdtimes.com/news/102/story1.htm
Web Services
	SOA’s: Defining the Integration and Orchestration of Services? If you think that the acronym SOA describes a term best associated with DNS, you’re only half right. With the arrival of next-generation Web services standards (including SOAP and WSDL), the term has come to mean service-oriented architecture. SOA is a hot topic. Read more at http://www.esj.com/news/print.asp?editorialsId=981.
	BEA Announces Liquid Computing Strategy at eWorld 2004 BEA's Chairman and CEO, Alfred Chuang launched eWorld 2004 by announcing their new strategy called Liquid Computing. The tagline for the conference is "DEPLOY SOA. NOW." Service-oriented Architecture or SOA is a key component of their Liquid Computing strategy. Read more at http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=26194
	Puzzling Plethora of Proffered Protocols Two more specifications for dealing with Web services are advancing onto the scene, leaving developers buried under an avalanche of competing specifications and uncertain as to which the industry ultimately will rally around. Read more at http://www.sdtimes.com/news/103/story2.htm
The Java Developer
	ICEsoft Spun Out of the Tornado Once acquired by Tornado tools maker Wind River Systems Inc. for its embedded development platform, ICEsoft Technologies Inc. is on its own again, and finding that demand from the enterprise is outstripping embedded by a factor of 8 to 1. Read more at http://www.sdtimes.com/news/102/emb1.htm
	Nexaweb XCS Platform: XML Client/Service and Java Platform Take on .NET With the emerging XML Client/Service technology, web applications can embody a rich user interface, reliable messaging, and performance comparable to local desktop applications while still retaining the zero-install deployment advantage of the web. By combining XML Client/Service with Java technology, Nexaweb Technologies Inc. enables enterprise Internet applications to enjoy both the capability of .NET-like rich clients and the strength of J2EE. Read more here.
J2EE and .NET
	Smoke, Mirrors and Silence: The Browser Wars Reignite Think the web browser wars are over? Think again. World War I was dubbed “The Great War" and "The War To End All Wars.” Alas, that was an optimistic prediction; WWII followed in short order. The browser wars are coming back, and this time the whole World Wide Web is at risk, not just a few browsers and their vendors. Read more at http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=174156
	Microsoft behind $12 million payment to Opera Microsoft agreed to pay Norway's Opera Software $12.75 million to head off a threatened lawsuit over code that made some Web pages on MSN look bad in certain versions of Opera's Web browser, CNET News.com has learned. Read more at http://news.com.com/Microsoft+behind+%2412+million+payment+to+Opera/2100-1032_3-5218163.html?tag=nefd.top
ICEsoft News
	ICEsoft Announces the Release of ICEpdf ICEsoft Technologies today announced the release of ICEpdf™, a 100 percent Java software development kit for rendering PDF documents. ICEpdf can be used as a standalone document viewer, as a lightweight component tightly integrated into Java applications, or combined with ICEbrowser® SDK to view PDF content embedded in HTML. PDF is the de facto standard for reliable distribution of electronic documents on the World Wide Web. Read more.
About ICEsoft
	ICEsoft Technologies, Inc. is the world's leading provider of Java browser and Java Web access software for enterprise applications, embedded systems and Web services. ICEsoft and its ICEreader and ICEbrowser brands are well known in the JAVA development community. Headquartered in Calgary, Canada, ICEsoft has customers in over 35 countries and is on the Web at www.icesoft.com. ICEsoft, ICEreader, ICEbrowser and ICEpdf are registered trademarks of ICEsoft Technologies, Inc. All other company and product names may be the subject of intellectual property rights reserved by third parties.