Rogue Wave Software, a division of Quovadx, recently saw its LEIF Web services product selected as one of three vendors (from a field of 11) for full evaluation under rigorous testing by the Professional Development Center Scholars at Carnegie Mellon University - West Coast Campus in a model problem study.

The study focused on creating an evaluation framework for identifying and evaluating rapid integration tools, with LEIF outpacing other evaluated tools in areas including vendor support, compatibility, flexibility, performance and interoperability. The report, entitled "Rapid Integration Tools for Rapid Application Development," was based on a model problem selected to closely mirror common legacy software integration challenges frequently found in business settings.

"We are proud that LEIF was selected to be part of Carnegie Mellon research, as LEIF was developed to specifically bridge the gap between C++ and Java based applications and ease the transition to a service-oriented architecture," said Tim Triemstra (pictured), vice president of product management, Rogue Wave Software division, Quovadx. "We welcome the creation of evaluation frameworks such as this, and look forward to continually improving and adding to our product offerings to support the increasingly complex needs of our clients."

The three integration tools were evaluated based on performance in each of seventeen attributes within seven categories. The seven categories include: business, evaluation specific performance, external reference specific performance, vendor support, tool specific performance and integration.Rogue Wave LEIF, IBM Websphere and IBM Rational Rapid Developer products were each selected for evaluation based on specific criteria including the tools' ability to solve a wide-range of Enterprise Application Integration problems, communicate between Java and C++ components, as well as the products' length of commercial availability and track record of success.

"As an increasing number of organizations are facing challenges similar to our model problem in adopting Web services, making a standard evaluation framework for integration tools is increasingly important," said Amit Midha, one of the authors of this report. "Through our research, we saw that these tools are integral to increasing the efficiency of integrating legacy components. LEIF proved to be easily integrated and tailored for specific needs, and to provide added value when working with C++ applications."