everal application software vendors have hailed the first fruits of IBM'
s Java-based San Francisco project as the first step toward standards that could make enterprise application development faster and cheaper over the next five years. The technology has also landed a big customer that will use it internally.
IBM unveiled the first application code, called San Francisco General Ledger, at last week's Summer Internet World '97 in Chicago. It will be released Aug. 15 along with object sets called San Francisco Foundation and Utilities and San Francisco Common Business Objects. IBM says the products will provide about 40% of the core functionality of standard business applications in Java, letting vendors and corporate developers focus on application design, customization, and other pieces that add user value.
Lawson Software in Minneapolis plans to use San Francisco to make its general-ledger application cross-platform. "We'd like to see them add accounts payable and receivable modules so we could do an entire financial suite in Java," says Peter Patton, Lawson's chief t
echnology officer.
San Francisco isn't initially aimed at in-house developers, but IBM announced that Germany's tax authority will use it to develop a prototype for its six-year project to overhaul the nation's tax-processing systems. IBM says it also has the interest of the automotive and insurance industries, which are looking to roll out cross-platform applications to their independent dealers and agents.
More than 200 software vendors say they support San Francisco, including Borland, Symantec, and Rational Software. "There's no reason not to have a set of standards for general software development, and Java absolutely fills the bill," says Irving Wladawsky-Berger, general manager of IBM's Internet division.
Also at Internet World, Sun Microsystems rolled out two free JavaBeans products that make it easier to migrate ActiveX components to Java. The products are JavaBeans Migration Assistant for ActiveX and the beta of JavaBeans Bridge for ActiveX.
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everal application software vendors have hailed the first fruits of IBM'
s Java-based San Francisco project as the first step toward standards that could make enterprise application development faster and cheaper over the next five years. The technology has also landed a big customer that will use it internally.
