By Rachel Chalmers

Sun Microsystems Inc has unveiled version 5 of its NetDynamics web application server, and as it promised in October 1998 (CI No 3,522), the new platform is built to underpin enterprise portals. In much the same way that consumer portals aggregate information and simple applications, the NetDynamics 5 product extends the portal metaphor to businesses by allowing them to integrate and host corporate applications on the internet, explained Alan Baratz, president of Sun Microsystems’ Java software. Like up- and-comer Viador (CI No 3,612), Sun reasons that corporate intranets need enterprise portals every bit as much as the internet proper needed web portals like Yahoo, Lycos and Excite.

To date, Sun says, application servers have evolved as point products to address specific needs. Some offer development capabilities but lack scalability; others scale but do not have a rapid application development environment. Still others lack an intangible Sun calls enterprise integration. NetDynamics 5, naturally, boasts all three. It provides a Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) interface with support for the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). Optimized resource management, caching, pooling and thread management are handled by the Java Transaction Service (JTS), which also manages Enterprise JavaBean deployment.

The idea behind the enterprise portal is apparently to provide interfaces to everything a corporation could conceivably be running under its hood. To that end, NetDynamics 5 also supports Microsoft’s Common Object Model (COM), Transaction Server (MTS), COM clients and Microsoft tools, Windows NT, Internet Explorer, Internet Information Server (IIS) and Microsoft SQL server, not to mention industry standards like extensible markup language (XML) and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).

Add to that a raft of IBM mainstays, including Customer Information Control System (CICS), Information Management System (IMS), MQSeries and AS/400, and the fact that NetDynamics already supports SAP R/3 and PeopleSoft, and many corporate bases are already covered. New software development kits extend the platform to online analytical processing (OLAP) and structured query language (SQL). If that’s not enough for you, Sun promises to throw its Jini technology into the mix.