GLUE, GAIA, J2EE

A Conversation with Graham Glass. Graham Glass, the chairman and chief architect of Addison, Texas-based The Mind Electric was formerly CTO and co-founder of ObjectSpace. InfoWorld Test Center Lead Analyst Jon Udell asked Glass about GLUE, TME's popular, Java-oriented Web services engine, and GAIA, a forthcoming product that aims to simplify the deployment and management of large-scale systems comprising many SOAP endpoints. [Full story at InfoWorld.com] ... [Jon Udell: InfoWorld]

An interesting interview -- especially about TME's highly anticipated GAIA platform. Glass says it's more "biological" system that embodies "SOA in a box". Will GAIA prove to be JINI for the rest of us?

It's also interesting to note that GLUE web services platform is covering J2EE space nicely except for EJB. Glass says GLUE aims to replace EJB with POJO clustering/caching/load-balancing. But I wonder how? POJOs must be made persistent and manageable somehow. EJB may be baroque but it's needed because managing persistent POJOs  by hand is not very wise. Also EJBs interface with legacy data and systems -- it lets you keep RDBMS and its applications like reporting and so on.

I suspect most needs for SOAP web services is to simplify the client side programming in J2EE land by making EJBs export their interface as WSDL, consumable by not just Java/JSP clients but other tools. This way not only can we have diverse clients but also we can do away with servlet/JSP plumbing and other headaches like deployment.

[It's too bad I cannot make it to TME's seminar on WS today...]