We provide a free SOA Knowledge and Performance Kit to let enterprise managers understand the developer productivity and performance differences between commercial SOA development and deployment platforms, including TIBCO, IBM, Oracle, and BEA. We dinged IBM for its huge download requirements to get their development platform installed on our equipment. Before you can write your first service, IBM requires you to download WebSphere Process Server, WebSphere Integration Developer, and Rational Application Developer. That's almost half a terrabyte of downloads.

Aaron Miller of IBM contacted me today to let me know that IBM is hosting an SOA Sandbox. The Sandbox uses Cytrix sessions to provide remote access to an operating environment where WebSphere is already installed, configured, and tuned. IBM offers the Sandbox through the developerWorks program, so its free. They even let you save a slice of the environment for ressurection later. The SOA Sandbox is a great resource for developers. Details are at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/soasandbox.

-Frank