BEA Systems announced that the company has extended its vision of an integrated suite for service-oriented architecture with its new AquaLogic Data Services Platform 2.1.

ALDSP 2.1 is designed to help application developers and SOA architects automate the process of service-enabling their data to build composite applications such as Web applications and portals. The product now features support for Microsoft ADO.NET, providing tooling and runtime support designed for transparent interoperability with .NET applications. This new feature gives users the ability to access (read) and update data through the ADO.NET standard to multiple back-end data sources.

With .NET support now built into ALDSP, BEA can help increase an enterprise’s ability to enable data access across its heterogeneous IT infrastructure. The ability to access data from a centralized service layer has become an important driver in the adoption of SOA. According to a recent International Data Group survey, nearly half of those deploying SOA (49 percent) named data access as a key driver in their company’s decision to adopt SOA.

“Our customers have told us that they recognize the need for robust tools for accessing and managing disparate data residing in different sources across the enterprise. This functionality represents a key step in allowing data to flow freely throughout the enterprise, and it’s an important cornerstone of an SOA implementation,” said Sanjeev Kumar, unit executive, BEA’s AquaLogic Data Business Unit. “In addition, ALDSP 2.1 can make it easier to choose an IT infrastructure that includes .NET and Java applications.”

Another important feature is the ALDSP 2.1 Audit Framework, which is designed to support flexible auditing of events across all heterogeneous sources for greater compliance and control for user-access. Also, the product’s new operational monitoring support can capture metrics associated with execution of data services and can allow them to be used for computing and tracking service level agreements.