IBM has announced the availability of 'WebSphere Technology for Developers', described as infrastructure software middleware which "enables companies to develop, deploy and integrate next-generation e-business applications, such as those for business-to-business e-commerce. WebSphere supports business applications from simple Web publishing through enterprise-scale transaction processing. WebSphere Technology for Developers is available at no charge on a limited basis today from IBM sales representatives and business partners." The WebSphere Technology for Developers is presented as "the first software in the industry that supports the variety of open standards necessary to develop and securely deploy Web services, including: (1) Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI), which enables businesses to describe themselves, publish technical specifications on how they want to conduct e-business with other companies and search for other businesses that provide goods and services they need all via online UDDI registries; (2) Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) -- IBM is the first to implement and integrate HTTPS, HTTP Authentication and SOAP security, including digital signatures, enabling end-to-end authentication, integrity and non-repudiation for SOAP messages. (3) Java2 Enterprise Edition J2EE; (4) Web Services Description Language (WSDL), which describes programs accessible via the Internet or other networks; (5) Enhanced integration of leading XML technologies."

From the announcement:

The new standards will allow software developers to create new e-business applications that will be able to navigate, discover and interact with other applications on the Internet similar to the way people navigate, discover and interact with Websites today. In other words, Web services are leading to a new phase in e-business in which the Internet will be driven increasingly by applications, which will lead to new levels of efficiency and productivity.

WebSphere Technology for Developers is the first software in the industry that supports the variety of open standards necessary to develop and securely deploy Web services, including:

• Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI), which enables businesses to describe themselves, publish technical specifications on how they want to conduct e-business with other companies and search for other businesses that provide goods and services they need all via online UDDI registries. IBM led the development of UDDI with Microsoft and Ariba.

• Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), which is a standard for reliably transporting electronic business messages from one business application to another over the Internet. IBM is the first to implement and integrate HTTPS, HTTP Authentication and SOAP security, including digital signatures, enabling end-to-end authentication, integrity and non-repudiation for SOAP messages. IBM and Lotus co-developed SOAP with Microsoft.

• Java2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), which is technology that enables software developers to write the "guts" of business applications (i.e. connections to databases, handling transactions, etc.) that will run across different computing systems. IBM contributed to most of the J2EE technology working with Sun Microsystems. With this announcement, WebSphere has passed the J2EE compatibility test suite (CTS) and is fully J2EE compliant.

• Web Services Description Language (WSDL) , which describes programs accessible via the Internet (or other networks) and the message formats and protocols used to communicate with them. WSDL is important because it enables Web services to describe their capabilities in a standard way, which allows for easier interoperability among Web services and development tools. IBM co-developed WSDL with Microsoft.

• Enhanced integration of leading XML technologies. IBM has been a leader in incorporating XML into its software since 1997. XML enables software developers to describe business data and content to a high degree of specificity and automatically exchange it.

WebSphere Technology for Developers supports what Gartner calls Services Oriented Development of Applications (SODA) and is IBM's Web application server software enabled with these standards.