Jack Germain, writing at Technology News (part of the ECT Network), provides some excellent coverage of Curl's recent announcement of three open source projects. You can learn more about these projects here in the Developer Community and follow links to the code repositories which are hosted at SourceForge. The three projects that are currently underway are the Web Services Development Kit (WSDK), the Curl Data Kit (CDK), and Curl Development Utilities (CDU).
WSDK, originally released in 2004 and updated in 2006, provides tools to develop Curl applications that make use of Web services such as SOAP/WSDL (Service Oriented Architecture Protocol/Web Services Description Language) and an XML (Extensible Markup Language) document model.
CDK is a library that 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. The CDK library enables a Curl application to store and retrieve data using SQLite and is an important foundation for Curl applications that support occasionally connected computing (OCC) workflows.
CDU provides functions supporting application development, including unit testing and project development. CDU consolidates techniques used in existing projects, as
these infrastructural components are used by both the WSDK and CDK projects.
Describing Curl, Germain writes:
Curl provides a Rich Internet Application platform for building and deploying Web-based applications. RIA-structured applications require complex, highly interactive interfaces that were previously possible only as client-server applications. Using Curl, developers can implement a new class of complex, business-critical, Web-based applications that cannot easily be developed with Ajax or other smart client technologies, said Curl officials. The Curl RIA platform allows corporations with legacy client-server applications to move to Web-based delivery. This can result in increased reach and reduced cost.David Rubenstein at SD Times also reported on the open source announcement and launch of this Developer Community and nicely captured the essence of the message we've been promoting regarding enterprise adoption of Rich Internet Applications:
Curl, which was acquired in 2000 by the Japanese company Sumisho, has seen a move away from client/server in Asia that is only just getting under way in the United States, according to chief strategy officer Jnan Dash. Business-to-consumer sites that require animation and graphics are driving rich Internet applications, he explained, adding that Adobe's Flash and AJAX are prevalent in those cases. "But nobody's addressing the issue of enterprises that have process-centric apps," he claimed. "The problem is how to take high-cost client/server applications to the Web to take advantage of those benefits."