BEA has unveiled Diablo, its next-generation WebLogic Server 9.0, the cornerstone of its upcoming WebLogic Platform 9.0 designed to connect disparate systems and run the applications that large companies use to run their business.

Diablo is supposed to be designed for rapid development and to deploy very high-volume apps in a newfangled service-oriented architecture with minimal disruption. It hopes simplified SOA development will lower costs.

BEA says Diablo's designed to provide enterprise-class messaging, which is critical to SOA, supposedly ensuring messages get delivered even if there's a systems failure.

Companies have previously had to buy specialized messaging products to get these capabilities. Diablo will make it part of a unified platform.

It also implements WS-ReliableMessaging, which is supposed to make different systems compatible in exchanging business messages.

BEA is promising significant performance and scalability gains so thousands of messages can be processed every second.

Diablo is designed to do application and server upgrades without taking a program off-line.