IBM has developed a set of software development tools that embrace the Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) standard, helping to ease IT management burdens by defining an architecture for connecting computing resources with management applications through standard- based interfaces.

In this architecture, an autonomic manager communicates with one or more resources (servers, databases, etc.) through manageability endpoints. An endpoint is a thin layer of code that translates between the standard interfaces and product-specific commands. The Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) standard was ratified to a 1.0 level by the OASIS standards organization earlier this year.

IBM Autonomic Integrated Development Environment (AIDE) provides tools, such as the IBM Manageability Endpoint Builder and the IBM Manageability Endpoint Simulator, to assist in deploying WSDM-enabled solutions.

The IBM Manageability Endpoint Builder includes tools and a run-time environment for building endpoints that allow products to expose manageability interfaces using the WSDM standard. It is accessible from a standard Eclipse environment and from the IBM Rational Application Developer product. It allows developers to deploy manageability endpoints in the Apache Axis or OSGi environments. With this interface, any WSDM-compliant tool or autonomic manager can view the status of the resource and make calls to modify the resource's state. It supports the latest version of the WS-ResourceFramework (WS-RF) and WS-DistributedManagement (WS-DM) specifications.

The IBM Manageability Endpoint Simulator, previously known as IBM Touchpoint Simulator, assists in the development of autonomic managers by emulating a WSDM-compliant managed resource. In a WSDM- enabled environment, an autonomic manager communicates with one or more resources (servers, databases, etc.) through endpoints. The major hurdle in building an autonomic manager is that developers need resources (and endpoints) with which to test. The Endpoint Simulator addresses this issue.

IBM Autonomic Task Manager for Administrators is a related tool on alphaWorks that uses WSDM to communicate with managed resources and displays the status in a spreadsheet-oriented user interface.

The tools are available for download on the IBM alphaWorks site.