It's a pretty exciting day here at Curl as we launch this all-new Developer Community site. For the past few months, a team of folks at Curl have worked with The Last Mile Group and Jive Software to create this new center designed specifically for developers interested in learning about how Curl can be used to build Richer Internet Applications. We have incorporated a lot of content into this community site to assist those of you who are new to Curl in getting up to speed as quickly as possible and to support experienced Curl developers by providing access to in-depth technical resources.

Our vision for this site is to promote an ongoing conversation among developers - like all communities, the more you contribute, the better the results. You'll be able to exchange ideas with others who are exploring how to take advantage of the web as a platform for delivering highly usable, responsive, and interactive line-of-business and mission critical applications within their organization or innovative new services and capabilities to customers and partners.

When you register as a community member, you'll have full access to all of the features and capabilities this community has been designed to provide including discussions with other community members and the Curl team, access to training and reference materials, code and application samples (including the Curl source code) you can use to demonstrate the capabilities of the Curl language and Run Time Environment (RTE) and put to use in your own projects. We plan to add more content on an ongoing basis ourselves but we believe that the best ideas will come from people like you who are working to develop real-world solutions to the opportunities and challenges facing your organization.

As you may have already seen, we've also announced a new Open Source initiative to put development kits for consuming web services, connecting to database resources, and tools to promote best practices in application development into the hands of the community to extend and enhance. Your contributions to this effort will make it possible for everyone using the Curl language and development tools to produce Richer Internet Applications.

To take full advantage of the Curl Developer Community, you should download and install the Curl RTE (available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X). With this runtime environment on your PC, you'll be able to take full advantage of the interactive features we've designed in this community site and can also run the Curl applications we've made available here for download to your local machine.

The next step is to download and install the Curl Integrated Development Environment for Windows or Linux which provides everything you need to build, test, and deploy your own Curl applications. The IDE includes a powerful development environment, a visual layout editor, and unique, interactive documentation that makes it possible for you to explore all of the capabilities of the Curl language in real-time as you explore the many features and capabilities available to you. Both downloads, as well as membership in this Developer Community are free.

We look forward to hearing from you – your suggestions, comments, and contributions to this Developer Community are essential to making this resource as valuable as it can be.

Here's the press release we issued this morning announcing the Open Source initiatives we've undertaken. You can access these projects here in the Developer Community from the navigation bar on the left side of the main pages or from the Browse menu on the toolbar at the top of every page.

Curl Announces Open Source Strategy for Enterprise Rich Internet Application Platform

Curl’s Open Source Code Gives Developers Necessary Components to Support Rapid RIA Development

Cambridge, MA – October 30, 2007 – Curl®, Inc. today announced its plans to release a significant body of code for the Curl Rich Internet Application (RIA) platform to the open source community. As the first step in its open source strategy, Curl will broaden its development platform and empower the Curl developer community by establishing a common repository of open source component libraries. As a result, developers will have all of the components required to support rapid development of enterprise-class RIAs. Curl’s Open Source projects are provided under the Apache V2.0 License and hosted by SourceForge.

“Enterprise developers increasingly demand access to open source software, and this trend is even stronger with Web-based technologies such as Rich Internet Applications,” said Bert Halstead, vice president and chief architect, Curl. “It’s important to provide this community with tools and components that support the rapid development of Curl-based applications. We are excited about how this initiative can catalyze the growth of the Curl platform as well as the entire enterprise RIA industry.”

As part of its first step to support open source technology initiatives, Curl has established three open source projects, which include the following:

• bq. Web Services Development Kit (WSDK) – This provides components enabling the development of Curl applications that make use of web services such as SOAP/WSDL and an XML document model. The WSDK was originally released in 2004. Since then, there have been several maintenance releases, the last of which was in fall 2006. With this Curl Open Source project, the WSDK becomes available under an open source license, with ongoing development transitioned to the Curl Open Source project.Web Services Development Kit
• bq. Curl Data Kit (CDK) – This library facilitates data-centric application development in Curl. It features support for client-side SQLite databases, which is the same standard supported by Adobe AIR and Google Gears. Using the CDK library, a Curl application can store and retrieve data using SQLite and is an important foundation for Curl occasionally connected computing (OCC) applications. This project was under active development by Curl engineering and solutions teams, and has transitioned to a Curl Open Source project.
• bq. Curl Development Utilities (CDU) – This provides functions supporting application development, including unit testing and project development. CDU aims to establish a foundation for good practices, by consolidating techniques used in existing projects, as these infrastructural components are used by both the WSDK and CDK projects.Curl’s Rich Internet Application platform is available in base and pro versions. The base versions of each are free and offer a real alternative to developers creating web applications that require rich interactive interfaces. The pro versions enhance the base versions with additional security, performance and maintainability features for enterprise class applications.

“The demand for RIA technologies has really taken off within the enterprise, and we anticipate the continued contributions by technology providers in this space to further expedite their broad adoption,” said Brad Shimmin, principal analyst, application infrastructure with Current Analysis. “These types of initiatives showcase a true commitment to the open source developer community and will ultimately contribute to the long-term success of RIA initiatives.”

As part of its continued commitment to the Curl development community, Curl plans to create additional Open Source projects in the future. For up-to-date information on the Curl Open Source strategy, please visit the Curl Developer Center, a forum for valuable educational resources and links to an extended community of Curl developers.