Last week, BEA announced M3 (code-named "Iceberg"), which integrates
three of its middlewares: TP monitor (Tuxedo), CORBA, and messaging. As
we predicted, these markets are converging into a single application
infrastructure platform (AIP), which will drive vendor convergence and
leave a few large enterprise players (BEA recently acquired NCR's Top
End). M3 is the first AIP from a major enterprise middleware vendor, and
while CORBA is well integrated into the Tuxedo engine, messaging
integration (BEA MessageQ - acquired from Digital) is poor. Missing are
asynchronous interface invocation, a message transformation engine, and
a message routing engine, which makes it difficult to implement
event-driven architectures using M3.
[Rob Harley, have you pegged the jargon buzz-meter yet?]
Bottom Line: Leading-edge users can begin exploiting M3, while others
should stick with Tuxedo and migrate when M3 matures.
----
adam@cs.caltech.edu
Polaroids, n. pl.: What polar bears get from sitting on icebergs.