BPEL and portal offerings are planned for inclusion in the upcoming enterprise version of the application server. Developers can start with the standard version and expand to the enterprise configuration for building an application to be used by an unlimited of people.

With its application server, Oracle is looking to satisfy demand for a combination of middleware and the application server, Farrell said. Highlighted in the application server is support for Web Services Invocation Framework, to enable services calls via technologies such as EJB or Java Connector Architecture. Calls do not need to be converted to XML and SOAP.

"You can talk directly to that EJB, but you still define the service using WSDL," Farrell said.

Also new in the application server is support for the Java Authentication and Authorization Service API, for security. Management is simplified via use of JMX (Java Management Extensions) MBeans to configure and monitor any component of the application.

The new application server supports the latest Web services standards, including WS-Security, WS-Reliability, and WS-Management.