Upgraded Web-services-management software from AmberPoint Inc. provides visibility into business exceptions, while Actional Corp. had added a tool that acts as both an XML server and a firewall.

Several vendors offer exception management, where a Web service fails to deliver results or response times leap upward. But AmberPoint's new Exception Manager can catch "errors involving inconsistent or out-of-bounds data that might indicate a problem," says Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with XML market researcher ZapThink. Product manager Dhruv Gupta says this capability would prevent problems like the one United Airlines Inc. had a couple of years ago, when it mistakenly offered a $25 fare from San Francisco to Paris on its Web site and 143 visitors bought tickets before it fixed the problem.

Meanwhile, Actional's SOAPstation Edge server adds an XML firewall to its monitoring of XML traffic. Edge can examine incoming Simple Object Access Protocol messages, deconstruct and examine their XML content, apply security policies to what it finds, then reconstruct the messages and route them to their destination. James Phillips, senior VP of products, says it's doing "in one hop what normally takes two hops." And Actional's new MyServices Portal gives a view of Web-services operations tailored to a particular manager.