Of course, the one constant from a vendor standpoint is that business applications need to be 99.999 percent hype-compliant. The hype changes annually--this past year the lucky ones have been Web services, XML and SOAP. To give vendors credit where it's due, just about every business application we've tested can say it supports Web services. But behind the curtain, we found that the method and level of support vary greatly from product to product. Some require learning new skills and protocols, like XML, XPath, QNames and XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation), while others have leapfrogged the pack by introducing seamless Web services support.
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WINNER: Tibco BusinessWorks 5.0. Tibco Software, (800) 420-8450, (650) 846-1000. www.tibco.com
TIBCO'S BUSINESSWORKS EAI SUITE combines integration and business-process management in one neat, standards-based package. BusinessWorks' almost code-less environment and support for a wide range of data sources, including flat files, SMTP, Rendezvous, JMS (Java Messaging Service), Web services and RDBMSs databases, make automating business processes a breeze. Its support for revision-control systems, such as Microsoft Visual SourceSafe, Perforce and PVCS, is a big plus, and its XML-based projects reuse feature adds flexibility never before seen in this market. The icing is Tibco's add-as-you-grow model for purchasing adapters, which means a lower entry cost without sacrificing future extensibility.
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