August 18, 1997

Toolset For E-Commerce Connect suite helps manage application life cycle By Andy Patrizio onnect Inc. is rolling out a suite of tools called Connect Application Workbench for building electronic-commerce applications that link to back-office enterprise applications such as SAP's R/3 or Baan's enterprise resource planning systems. "In the Internet space, a lot of vendors are just figuring out how to get an application out the door," says Brian Valente, director of product marketing for Connect, in Mountain View, Calif. "Customers and integrators want more control of the application development life cycle." The suite includes the Connect Object Designer, a repository that stores Unified Modeling Language-based objects. It works with Rational Sof tware's Rational Rose object modeling tool, so existing models developed in Rose can be used in constructing Web pages. Connect Site Manager is a drag-and-drop content manager for building the Web application. The developer simply drags components on or off the workbench to build the page. It supports HTML, Java, graphics, application code, Perl scripts, ActiveX controls, and object models. The Connect Operations Monitoring Console provides site managers with detailed reports on potential bottlenecks in applications. Connect ACE is a set of widgets that work with Marimba's Bongo Java interface builder. This lets developers create Java clients that interface with Connect's OrderStream application server or back-office applications like SAP's R/3. Additionally, Connect Reporting and OLAP tools provide data mining and reporting capabilities. Ron Dumoulin, manager of systems development for FOTL Systems, the IT department for clothing manufacturer Fruit of the Loom Inc. in Nashville, Tenn., says the Connect Application Workbench is a good step toward a single solution. "If you're aware of E-commerce, there are a lot of areas you have to be concerned with, such as data transfer, file integrity, system performance, and data structure," he says. "This has the potential to handle all that." Connect Application Workbench will be available from Connect by the end of this quarter for $5,000. Back to News in Review Send Us Your Feedback Top of the Page

---