InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
March 29, 1999
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Development is primarily based on HTML templates and follows a simple but advanced procedural application flow. Users with basic development skills can become productive with the development environment in a few hours. The latest version of Tango supports the creation of Tango Application Files in XML format, making development more open and standards-based.
The approach of the technology makes it a good fit for rapid prototyping and deployment of applications for small to midsize companies, and for departmental applications in large organizations. This, coupled with the Pervasive's support and financial resources, gives Tango a bright future.
Apptivity 3
Progress Software Inc., a strong vendor in the enterprise computing market, recently bought Apptivity and its application server. With Apptivity, Progress is targeting medium-to-large IT organizations and their Java application development needs.
Progress is a proponent of server-centric computing, in which organizations run both internal and external applications using server-side Java in intranet and extranet environments, while allowing HTML clients for external applications with unknown user environments. With this approach, the Apptivity development environment and server competes with solutions from Netscape, WebLogic, SilverStream, and NetDynamics. Developing applications in Apptivity requires a good Java programming background. The recent addition of HTML will increase the system's appeal and widen its target market.
Progress provides extremely strong load balancing and other low-level services. The server provides the ability to detect the client's technical environment and provide the optimal interface, which could be HTML or Java. For example, HTML users can have full functionality, whereas Java users get capabilities that are optimized for that environment.
SilverStream Application Server 2.0
SilverStream Software Inc. was founded in 1996 by former executives from Lotus Development, Powersoft, and Watermark Software. Since then, the company's software has evolved from a solid development environment into a system that also offers a strong back end for business-critical applications.
SilverStream's application server now provides multiserver support with dynamic load balancing and failover capabilities. SilverStream even provides session-level failover capabilities, which are particularly valuable for certain classes of applications, such as E-commerce or financial applications that are at risk if transactions are interrupted and lost. SilverStream's use of data source objects allow it to more effectively integrate with disparate back-end legacy and line-of-business applications.
On the development side, SilverStream provides a powerful fourth-generation-language development environment. The system now allows developers to use the same event-based programming techniques to build HTML applications as well as Java client applications. The development tools are reasonably intuitive, but will require experienced Java developers for server-side development. Also, the system lacks support for Enterprise JavaBeans.
Business Logic Server/Jade Developer Studio 4.0
Vision Software Tools Inc., a startup in the Web application server market, has sound funding and a powerful management team. It also has a solid application development environment for rapidly building business logic. Vision's product is geared toward Java developers, where it competes with products from vendors such as SilverStream.
One of Jade Developer Studio's key strategic strengths is its ability to build applications without requiring extensive custom coding. Jade allows developers to flowchart the sequence of actions and forms for the application, speeding development. In addition, the studio lets developers create rules and conditional logic in a point-and-click fashion. Jade's application server provides basic system services, but the real value is in the development environment--an area that Vision will continue to focus on, expecting that the larger infrastructure vendors will eventually commoditize back-end system services.
While this approach is novel, Vision's development environment still has some limitations. For example, the system can create only Java clients, with no support for HTML front ends. We were also looking for easier integration with third-party applications and legacy systems. But overall, the development environment is a straightforward solution that offers an alternative in a competitive market.
Gautam Desai is a senior analyst, Jeetu Patel is VP of research, Joe Fenner is a senior technical writer, and Mark Schenecker is VP of electronic commerce at Doculabs, an independent advisory firm that specializes in infrastructure components and technologies for Web applications, knowledge-management, document-management, and document-output strategies. You can contact Doculabs at info@doculabs.com.
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