SOA security gateway maker Layer 7 Technologies and enterprise Web 2.0 software vendor Nexaweb have announced a partnership aimed at better integration between SOA and Web 2.0, called Web2SOA. Nexaweb says that the aim is to bring better security to its RIAs (rich Internet applications) that access enterprise systems, as well as promote the idea of SOA as a platform for Web 2.0 apps.
The latter is certainly a good idea: SOA is an ideal back-end for RIAs, and for now most companies can get more value out of Ajax and other RIAs than the more social aspects of Web 2.0, such as wikis and blogs. And of the SOA security gateways, Layer 7 has been particularly focused on RIAs. Unlike most server-to-server Web services, browser-based clients don't use the SOAP stack and in many cases aren't even based on XML. In contrast, Layer 7 has long touted its ability to look beyond XML, inspecting other messaging formats and HTTP payloads.
