With an eye toward easing Web service application creation and personalization, Kinzan Inc. on Tuesday introduced an application framework designed to automatically generate and assemble components used to build Web services.

Built on a J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) platform and conforming to current Web services standards such as WSDL (Web Services Description Language), SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), and XML (Extensible Markup Language), the Adaptive Web Services Suite 2.0 is comprised of tools for building Web services, connectors to back-end systems such as SAP R/3 and Siebel, and a run-time server that allows business users to assemble Web services components into applications.

Adaptive Web Services creates loosely coupled XML components containing presentation, business logic, data, personalization, and security, according to Gari Cheever, president and chief executive officer of Kinzan, in Carlsbad, California.

"Our product assembles these components from existing back-end systems and displays them in a variety of ways," he said.

The resulting Web services components can be displayed to wireless devices, into an existing portal framework, or assembled into Kinzan's Application Framework. The Application Framework contains an enterprise portal, pre-built components for speeding application development, and an Adaptive Web Services Engine that provides a loosely coupled run-time environment, company officials said.

Aiming to eliminate the need for custom coding required to build human interfaces to Web services, the toolset lets developers easily compile reusable components into applications.

"The benefit to our technology is it makes it easier to share components that themselves are miniature applications, so you don't need engineers to turn Web services into applications," Cheever said. "Business people can start to assemble their own Web services-based applications by pointing and clicking at components that they want to tie together."

Kinzan customers such as Avon, Maytag, and NTT can, for example, grab a handful of components and easily stitch together a Web service, according to Cheever.

"By clicking on three components and dragging and dropping them onto a page, a business person can create an application that can check order status, show customer account [information], and display logistics and fulfillment from a third-party system," he said.

Additionally, Kinzan has partnered with IBM to jointly market and sell its Adaptive Web Services Suite, which is available now. Development licenses start at US$3,000 and production licenses start at $60,000.