Oracle is simplifying the process of building and managing secure Web-services software by making its business-process manager and Web-services-management products work together.

Oracle BPEL Process Manager and Oracle Web Services Manager will remain separate products, but they're now able to call each other and share metadata, says Prakash Ramamurthy, VP of server technologies. The two products will be part of Oracle's Fusion Middleware set, which developers will use to build Web services based on new and existing applications.

Security can be a challenge when building Web services. Last week, McAfee Inc. released WSDigger, an open-source tool developed by its Foundstone security services group, for testing Web-services systems for security vulnerabilities.

BPEL Process Manager implements Business Process Execution Language, a standard from the Oasis standards body used to build business processes via Web services. The Oracle product provides a graphical user interface for designing business processes and support for a standard infrastructure to make them work. BPEL Process Manager, for example, can process XML documents or use XPath, a standard language that describes ways to locate and process XML text, to retrieve data from XML documents, Ramamurthy says.

Oracle Web Services Manager is used to define and implement security and operational policies. Oracle acquired Web Services Manager earlier this year through its acquisition of Oblix Inc.