At the JavaOne conference in San Francisco this week, Java software makers will attempt to regain ground lost to Microsoft in the emerging market for Web services development tools and technologies.

"Microsoft actually supports what people are calling 'Web services' - SOAP, xML, etc. - better than Java," says Randy Starr, Countermind's director of mobile and wireless solutions practice.

Seeking to enable multilayered transactional applications, BMC Software is introducing an addition to its Control-M product family that links batch-management systems to processes executed via Web ...