The following e-mail will be sent on your behalf.

 has sent the following story to you from ElectricNews.net.

The story is available from https://electricnews.net/news.html?code=8577485

Iona's enlists 7,000 Dream Warriors 
Thursday, August 01 2002
by Ciaran Buckley


Irish software company Iona says its on-line war game is proving to be a success,
as an increasing number of developers use Iona tools to play the game. 



Iona's "Dream Warrior" on-line video game is designed to entertain users who
have an interest in real-time fantasy war games. And through the game, software
developers can pit armies of sword-wielding solders, trolls and wizards against
each other. But Iona also has a secondary motive; the introduction of its own
software tools to thousands of developers, who could someday become paying
customers. 





Already, the game has racked up 7,000 registrations with 20,000 unique visitors
in its first three months, Iona said on Thursday. And the company says it hopes
more will sign up to play "HREF="http://portals.devx.com/dreamwarrior/Door/6209">Dream Warrior,"
which also serves a training ground for developers of Web Services Description
Language (WSDL) software, specifically those using Iona's WSDL development tool
Orbix E2A, XMLBus Edition. 





"We're sending a subliminal message to people," said Simon Pepper, Iona's
director of product marketing, for the EMEA region. "When they realise that
they can create gaming components to a common standard across the Web, they'll
quickly realise that WSDL can be used for many other applications."



Developers who participate in the Dream Warrior Challenge are provided with
access to Iona WSDL developer tools and tutorials, which allow them to build game
components, such as weapons and armour, which can be adopted by participants in
the on-line fantasy battle game.



"We're trying to reach the kind of people who would have adopted the CORBA,
Java and XML standards during the early stages," he added. "These aren't the
kind of people who learn about new technologies while sitting in a classroom,
they like to play with them to find out what they can do."



Developers are awarded points based on the number of participants who use their
components during the course of a game. And developers who accrue a sufficient
number of votes are awarded prizes, such as cash and holidays.



Iona made its name with Orbix, its implementation of the CORBA middleware
standard. CORBA allows software components to communicate using a common
standard.  "WSDL works better than CORBA across the Internet, in terms of
dealing with network gateways and firewalls," said Pepper. "But CORBA and WSDL
are similar in their approach and we provide and support both." 





Dream Warrior is only available in the US because the game is regulated by the
state gambling commissions of a number of states. Although there were plans to
roll it out in Europe, Iona has decided that regulatory issues would make it too
complex to introduce here.