The company said it intends to release all the components and technologies in Java System Portal Server 7, initially creating an open source portlet repository followed by the release of its standardized Portlet Container and Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) implementations.

The first open source release from Sun's SeeBeyond acquisition, the Java CAPS BPEL Engine, is available now at http://java.sun.com/integration/community.jsp.

The BPEL Engine automates the orchestration of complex business processes and workflows, spanning Web Services, systems, people and companies.

Sun is planning to release its Java Studio Development Tools as part of the anti-Eclipse NetBeans.org. The Java Studio Creator toolset for rapid visual development of standards-based web applications will be open sourced later this year, it said. The NetBeans Enterprise, with code taken from the Java Studio Enterprise product, is available now at http://www.netbeans.org/products/enterprise and includes UML, BPEL-based Web Services orchestration and advanced XML editing tools.

Sun also said it was expanding Project Glassfish into the OpenJava EE community and open sourcing Java Message Queue and Web Services Interoperability Technology (WSIT), a collection of WS-* implementations to help drive interoperability between Java and Microsoft's .NET Framework at http://wsit.dev.java.net.

The collection includes security, messaging, QoS and metadata support components. Sun simultaneously released a NetBeans 5.5 plug-in for WSIT that's supposed to facilitate the development of cross-platform Web Services. It said WSIT is a key component of an internal project called Tango and part of the ongoing interoperability effort between Sun and Microsoft.

Apparently WSIT has been tested "extensively" with Microsoft's Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Sun calls it "a reliable way for Java technology-based applications to integrate and interoperate with the .NET Framework - above and beyond the WS-I Basic Profiles."

In the interests of interoperability, Sun is going to support WSIT in the next version of its Java System Application Server, which has little market share.

Sun and Microsoft said their engineers are collaborating to help ensure that implementations of WCF-based services and Java Platform Enterprise Edition 5 (Java EE 5)-based services will be interoperable, allowing a single business process design to run seamlessly across the Java platform and the .NET Framework. Sun's BPEL Engine will let developers apply business logic and orchestrate complex business processes and workflows.

Sun said the specific interoperable WSIT technologies that will be delivered within this open source effort are WS-Reliable Messaging, WS-Coordination and WS-Transactions for Quality of Service; WS-Security, WS-Trust, WS-Secure Conversation and WS-Security Policy for security; WSDL, XML Schema, WS-Policy and WS-Metadata Exchange for metadata; and SOAP, WS-Addressing and Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM) for messaging.

(This story appeared originally at www.clientservernews.com)