While it remains the standard for building and deploying applications online, JEE is frequently found by developers and architects to be too complex for virtualized or cloud computing scenarios. J2EE also suffers from limitations in the area of code reuse, especially across process boundaries.
To address these limitations, work began a number of years ago on a new programming model, called the service component architecture (SCA). SCA allows developers to build distributed applications and reuse components more efficiently and effectively. While not explicitly anointed as the future of J2EE by the vendors behind its creation, SCA certainly moves the SOA market in that direction, taking active steps to simplify features for reuse, composition, policy administration and loosely coupled services which were only fuzzily defined in earlier models.
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When looking to build a web application, developers can go the traditional application server route, choosing to work with one of the large traditional app server vendors and their more costly solutions. But others prefer a more nimble approach, taking the route of a lightweight application server, which many believe provides a simpler and more streamlined way of doing development.
Intalio’s interest in transaction management began some years back as the company began receiving requests from its customer base for “a couple of extra things” -- additional components to layer on top of the Jetty App Server. Customers were seeking specifically components for JMS message support, and for transaction management.
Right around the time Intalio (then Webtide) began looking for a vendor partner to supply the transaction management component, transaction management vendor Atomikos began shopping the market for a lightweight app server with which to integrate. The intersection of the needs of both vendors at roughly the same time in the market made the Intalio/Atomikos partnership a match made in heaven.
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