CA Enhances Web Services Interoperability in Plex 6.1
December 16, 2008 Alex Woodie
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CA today unveiled a new release of Plex, its rapid application development environment that generates 3GL code for Windows, Java, and IBM i runtime environments. With Plex 6.1, the New York company adds support for Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Microsoft‘s Web services framework. Support for WCF enables Plex customers to mix and match Web services running on .NET and other platforms, thereby easing application integration efforts that span multiple platforms. Plex and its close relative, 2E, are the direct descendents the Obsydian and Synon/2E 4GL development tools created by Simon Williams and his developers at Synon more than 20 years ago. The tools are similar in many respects, except for the fact that 2E targets only AS/400, whereas Plex supports AS/400, Windows, and Java. Williams sold them to Sterling Commerce in 1998 and they were obtained by CA soon thereafter. The main new feature in Plex 6.1–the first major release of Plex in a year and a half–is the capability to model and generate .NET-based services that adhere to Microsoft’s WCF standard. According to CA, this gives Plex users great flexibility in developing Web services that can be “mixed and matched” as part of a service oriented architecture (SOA) that spans across a company and even extends out to its business partners. Other enhancements include support for Windows Vista, easier viewing and documenting of group model updates, improved APIs for extending the CA Plex environment programmatically, and IPv6 support. CA has supported IBM i 6.1–previously known as i5/OS V6R1–in Plex since the new operating system shipped earlier this year. CA Plex 6.1 is available now. For more information, visit www.ca.com. RELATED STORIES WebClient for CA Plex 1.4 Now Available CA Plex Users to Get New Web Deployment Tool CA Updates System i Development Tools, Renames Them Again CA to Offer C# Code Generator with AllFusion Plex Release 6
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