IBM has released an Eclipse/Rational Application Developer (RAD) plug-in, that interactively visualizes Web services transactions. The Web Services Navigator plug-in will enable developers to debug programming faults in architectures such as those seen in SOA applications.

The plug-in enables developers to actually see how various Web services are carried out. By creating a new perspective to view transactions, IBM hopes to give developers a clearer, less complicated view of Web services, so their creation and debugging is smoother.

IBM Web Services Navigator uses a companion technology, a data collector, that IBM will be introducing separately. Acting together, the data collector will allow the Navigator to visualize logs of Web service activity from IBM WebSphere Application Servers. The data collector will be responsible for gathering the data the Eclipse plug-in will use.

Developers will be given four new perspectives with interactive views of transactions and messages. The perspectives includes a Services Topology, by which to view various Web services transactions within transactions; Transaction Flows view, which creates diagrams showing the flow of messages in applications; a Flow Pattern view which illustrates transaction patterns; and a Message Contents view that tracks selected data values and shows the content of individual messages.

IBM is offering the Web Services Navigator plug-in as a package for Eclipse 3 or Rational Application Developer 6, along with a collection of sample logs. Online documentation is provided as well. Windows 2000 and XP are supported by the plug-ins.