(December 4, 2001) - Sun Microsystems, Inc. has announced the availability of a new module that strengthens Web services support provided by the company's Forte for Java integrated development environment (IDE). The module adds native SOAP and WSDL support to the product's Enterprise Edition, so developers can easily leverage these emerging standards to create, assemble and deploy services on demand. The module is available through the IDE's AutoUpdate feature (http://forte.sun.com/eap/ ), which simplifies the process for developers to quickly extend and customize their IDE with innovative, rapidly evolving functions.

The new module helps to automate the development of services on demand and leverages SOAP and WSDL, underscoring Sun's commitment to these emerging standards. With native support for these technologies, developers can now more easily generate SOAP-RPC interfaces for Enterprise JavaBeans technology and other enterprise components, making it simpler for other services to interact with them.

The new module extends support for services on demand through the Forte for Java IDE conforming to the SOAP 1.1 and WSDL 1.1 specifications. Using wizards, developers can create SOAP-RPC based services, which can easily be integrated with services developed using other technologies. In addition, this module simplifies the description of services using WSDL. The module is currently available at no charge to members of the early access developer community at http://forte.sun.com/eap/.