Web services technology leverages open standards and harnesses the power of the Internet, allowing disparate systems to interact cooperatively with each other over a network. Because there is a rapidly growing need for business applications to work more closely together, the ability of Web services to support that activity in a standard, well-defined manner has generated an enormous amount of interest. Applications, such as supply chain management and customer relationship management, are just two examples of such systems. David Wallwork provides yet another example in his article on BBj and Web services that appears in this issue of the Advantage.

Current BASIS product offerings, including ODBC, JDBC, Java BBj Bridge and File System API's, support the exchange of data between systems and applications. With the addition of Web services support, BBj may now participate in the exchange of business rules between applications running on multiple platforms and written in multiple development languages using standard interfaces.

Web services may change forever business application integration. Whether integrating a customer's BBj application with other companies' processes, or integrating a customer's internal processes supported by non-BBj applications, Web services simplifies the integration. Web services are the next logical step in the evolution of the Web and provide the underlying architecture for the IBM WebSphere and Microsoft.Net deployments. With Web services, BASIS has moved BBj to a new stage of e-business, where organizations can easily exchange services and integrate business processes with one another.

In addition to supporting Web services, BBj 3.0 includes a host of other enhancements. Among these is the support of MDI (Multiple Document Interface), a popular and significant GUI development feature. Further, BBj 3.0 includes an enhanced Enterprise Manager, which simplifies the support of applications. Capitalizing on Flexlm functionality, BBj 3.0 supports ASP (Application Service Provider) deployment for developers who want to sell and support their applications using this model. (To read more about BBj 3.0, see Greg Grisham's article, BBj 3.0 - Major Release - Major Functionality.)

At this year's TechCon, BASIS will demonstrate BBj 3.0 and show the enormous benefits our Java-based technology has produced for the Business BASIC community. I look forward to seeing each of you at BASIS TechCon2003.

George Hight President and Chairman of the Board