Curl Blog : 2007 : November

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Microsoft bumps Silverlight to 2.0

Posted by marc Nov 30, 2007

There's been quite a bit of buzz in the RIA world following Microsoft's announcement that Silverlight 1.1 has been supplanted by version 2.0. The biggest change, based on early reports, is a clearer articulation of the company's positioning strategy for Silverlight. Based on a post by Tim Sneath, it appears clear that Silverlight is now the RIA/web app component for Windows Presenttation Foundation (WPF) and has been reworked to align better with that framework.

So what's coming in Silverlight 2.0? I think the thing that excites me the most about this release is the scale and breadth of UI innovation going into Silverlight. In WPF, we have a really powerful platform for building Windows desktop applications, and it will remain the "Ferrari" that contains the highest level of graphical functionality. Silverlight takes that same UI framework and transports it to the web, enabling RIA developers to create web-based applications using all the same skills as they need to build sophisticated Windows client applications. This unification of the framework across web and desktop is not easy to accomplish; many of the breaking changes that you'll see between Silverlight 1.1 Alpha and the Silverlight 2.0 Beta have been introduced to bring about far greater consistency between Silverlight and WPF. The goal is to make it really easy to take a Silverlight application and bring it to the desktop: you shouldn't have to completely rewrite the code to reach across the barrier to an offline solution.

Ryan Stewart has some interesting thoughts about this announcment and sits in an unusual spot as one of the most vocal and active analysts covering RIA technologies and also an Adobe AIR evangelists. SOme of the Microsoft faithful are issuing pronouncements like, "Watch out Adobe". I'm sure Ryan would agree that this announcement and the ongoing maturation of Silverlight has caught no one at Adobe (or anyone else working in this space) by surprise. He discusses how the more evolved UI and architecture makes Silverlight more directly comparable to Flash:

"...they’ve overhauled some of the technical aspects in Silverlight 2.0. The rich control set is aimed at giving you the ability to create actual applications and they are going to have a high level of networking support. Scott’s blog says you’ll be able to expect REST, POX, RSS and Web Services from Silverlight. This brings it up to par in a lot of ways with Flash on the networking side"

Silverlight 2.0 is slated for public release at MIX08 in Las Vegas this March. Expect a continual stream of information "leaks" between now and then as the strategy, positioning, and technical details become more defined.

0 Comments 0 References Permalink Tags: ria, tools

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Forrester Releases New RIA Report

Posted by marc Nov 28, 2007

Forrester analysts Erica Driver and Ron Rogowski have just published a new report titled "RIAs Bring People-Centered Design To Information Workplaces". It's a comprehensive look at how Ricch Internet Applications have the potential to redefine the work environment in the enterprise. Curl was among the vendors of RIA tools that Forrester interviewed for this report. Other participants included Adobe Systems, Backbase, Cynergy Systems, EffectiveUI, Esria, IBM, Laszlo Systems, Microsoft, Nexaweb Technologies, Oracle, Roundarch, and SAP. Here's the executive summary:

Until recently, the primary options for delivering on the vision of Information Workplaces were enterprise portals or Microsoft Office. While those options remain suitable for many scenarios, rich Internet applications (RIAs) are emerging as vehicles to enable the next generation of Information Workplaces that are best suited for decision-makers and task-oriented workers who engage in complex, multistep processes — people who need seamless, individualized, and highly visual user experiences. Information and knowledge management (I&KM) professionals should analyze roles to decide if RIAs are appropriate, integrate data from existing applications into RIA-based Information Workplaces, and test rigorously to make sure that RIA-based Information Workplaces attain optimal results that will improve both employee and end customer experiences.

Update: Richard MacManus at Read/Write Web provides a brief overview of the report and concludes:

...the amount of RIA activity happening on the Web today suggests that the enterprise will indeed be mined. Just as consumer web apps have made their way into the Enterprise over the past few years, so will RIA infiltrate the office.

0 Comments 0 References Permalink Tags: enterprise2.0, enterprise_ria, news_&_reviews, ria, tools

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New RIA Podcast Announced

Posted by marc Nov 21, 2007

On his ZDNet blog, Ryan Stewart (also an Adobe AIR evangelist) announced that he and Michael Coté of Redmonk are teaming up to produce a weekly podcast about Rich Internet Applications. Should be a great resource. I'm subscribed!

This week I recorded the inaugural episode (episode link) of a podcast I’ll be doing with Michael Coté from Redmonk. In Coté’s words, there’s not a centralized area to go for weekly news, so that’s the theme for the podcast. I’m going to be taking stuff from my shared items and cool RIA stuff that I get and we’ll be talking about them in the podcast. I’m really excited about this because I think Coté and I have a diverse enough set of interests that it should be interesting to a lot of people.

In this week’s episode we have Charles Lowell with us talking a bit about how they add interactivity to their applications. We also talk about Flex at Oracle’s OpenWorld (courtesy of James Ward) and what Flex in the enterprise world means. We spend some time talking about Coté’s Chumby and then wrap up by talking about the release of Visual Studio 2008.

0 Comments 0 References Permalink Tags: ria, enterprise_ria, podcast

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Curl 6.0 Now Available

Posted by marc Nov 19, 2007

Today, we announced the availability of of Curl 6.0, the latest release of our development and deployment platform for Richer Internet Applications. Here's the announcement:

Curl Announces Version 6.0 of Rich Internet Application Development Platform

Newest version helps enterprise RIA developers create modern user interfaces and build mashups

Cambridge, MA - November 19, 2007 - Curl, Inc. today announced Version 6.0 of its Curl Rich Internet Application (RIA) platform, which makes it easier for developers to build enterprise-class RIAs. The new release includes significantly expanded user interface styling capabilities, enabling developers to provide a fresh, modernized look and feel, along with an engaging end-user experience for any Curl-based application. Additionally, Version 6.0 enables new kinds of enterprise mashups that integrate JavaScript and Curl APIs.

“Our focus on the enterprise has enabled us to see the specific pain points that organizations face when developing their most mission-critical, sophisticated, Web-based applications,” said Bert Halstead, vice president and chief architect, Curl. “With powerful new look and feel options and the ability to build mashups incorporating JavaScript components, the most powerful platform in the RIA industry continues to bring enterprises the tools they need to address their challenges head-on.”

Key features of Version 6.0 of the Curl platform include:

Skinning Package – This provides new appearance options for controls, including drop shadows, custom images, gradients, and rounded corners. In addition, the new version includes a predefined style sheet and skin that can be used to instantly give Curl applications a modernized look.
Advanced Rendering APIs – Curl 6.0 provides convenient access to advanced features such as antialiasing and alpha blending.
AJAX Interoperability Features – Curl applications can now make calls to JavaScript APIs in the surrounding Web page, and can also be controlled from JavaScript in the surrounding page. Support for parsing and creating data streams in JSON format is included as well. With these features, Curl can be used to build mashups that include data accessed using existing JavaScript APIs.
Server Interoperability Features – With this, Curl provides a server-side Java package that can be used to access data on the server using the Curl serialization format.

“Rich Internet Application technologies have demonstrated their value in the enterprise, and major vendors are now competing for this growing market,” said Richard Monson-Haefel, senior analyst, Burton Group. “Curl is an excellent option for any enterprise considering RIA technologies. In addition to providing common UI widgets and other controls, Curl surpasses many RIA solutions in terms of richness by providing a solid foundation on which to build extremely sophisticated graphics to visually represent very large sets of data.”

While Curl has brought several new enhancements to its RIA platform, Version 6.0 will continue to provide many of the same attributes that have already made Curl the choice for more than 300 enterprise customers:

Supports a wide range of Windows platforms, as far back as Windows 98, as well as Linux and Mac OS X.
Exhibits the highest run-time performance and the most compact application sizes of any RIA platform.
Enables effective software development by means of the Curl content language that supports text markup, graphics, scripting, and high-performance object-oriented computing, all in one integrated framework.
Supports thousands of APIs such as charts, controls, record sets, animated 2D and 3D graphics, internationalization, and much more.
Provides a comprehensive Integrated Development Environment (IDE), which includes a drag-and-drop visual layout editor, debugger, performance profiler, interactive documentation, deployment tool, and much more.

Curl Version 6.0 is currently available for download at http://www.curl.com/download/index.php.

0 Comments 0 References Permalink Tags: enterprise2.0, enterprise_ria, ide, ria, tools

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Curl V6 & Enterprise Mashups

Posted by richard Nov 13, 2007

With the release of V6, Curl applications will be able to interact with Internet based services using Javascript. This opens Curl to the whole world of enterprise mashups. Here are some thoughts on where Curl mashups might provide interesting application in the future.

Andy Dornan defines three types of enterprise mashups in "Mashup Basics: Three for the Money" at Network Computing. They are:

Presentation Mashups - These involve the end user's ability to tailor what they see on the desktop and represent integration at the presentation or visual layer. Examples include sites like my.yahoo and iGoogle. This is the simplest type of mashup as it involves very little real integration allowing the selection and placement of applets into the desktop view.
Data Mashups - These almost always involve programming to integrate different data stores into a new consolidated view. A good example in B2C is Zillow.com that integrates maps, real-estate offerings and local county records to give a consolidated view of local housing markets.
Logic Mashups - These are the most complex type and always involve programming as they combine 2 or more applications and their workflow into a new application. Comparison-shopping sites illustrate this by integrating product and price research with the purchasing process.

This taxonomy provides a good framework to show how Curl might be used in future enterprise mashups. In upcoming posts I'll be considering each in detail but here is my initial thinking.

*Curl Presentation Mashup*- The simplest Curl presentation mashup would involve making Curl applications available as a portlets in the major portal frameworks (Weblogic, Websphere and Sharepoint). Having Curl applications as portlets would let end users select and position them within their portal view.

Curl Data Mashup - Curl is best suited for interactive displays of large complex datasets. This makes Curl an interesting option for data mashups. Paisley, a GRC vendor uses Curl to provide visualization of risk and compliance data integrated from the various departmental and organizational data stores that contain that information. As this type of data visualization becomes more sophisticated Curl users could automatically create new visualizations by gathering different databases on the fly.

Curl Logic Mashup - Curl provides a platform for the implementation of web applications that could only have been implemented as client server applications in the past. Curl's enables the full power of the native desktop hardware similar to a desktop application but delivers the application over the web. In client server applications most of the business logic is on the client but as we moved to the web all this logic moved to the middle application server tier. Over the years the application server tier has become very evolved to the point where application logic is now assembled without programming. A similar evolution has barely begun on the client side for RIA. The opportunity is there to create a much more evolved RIA stack that would enable client-side logic mashups.

Richard

0 Comments 0 References Permalink Tags: enterprise_ria, enterprise2.0, news_&_reviews, ria, enterprisemashups, mashups, ria-mashups

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ZDNet coverage of Curl 6.0 beta release

Posted by marc Nov 12, 2007

Ryan Stewart of ZDNet discusses the new Curl 6.0 beta release and likes what he sees. Ryan is a must-follow voice in the Rich Internet Application space. He's been covering RIAs on his personal blog and on The Universal Desktop at ZDnet for quite some time and brings to the discussion his own experience as a Flex developer. Although he's recently joined Adobe as an evangelist for their AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) product, Ryan has maintained a unique and independent voice. If you're tracking this market or are actively involved in developing and deploying RIAs, he's an important resource.

Discussing the new skinnable application controls we've incorporated into version 6.0, Ryan writes:

...the biggest thing for me is the new skinning support. Curl now has a skinning application that lets developers make the interfaces look a lot more polished. The new skinning support uses style-sheets so that most designers will be at home in the environment. Because of the enterprise focus, Curl has always been great performance-wise, but the aesthetics left a lot to be desired. With the new support for skinning, people using Curl will be able to make applications that look good as well as run well. Another piece of this is the new rendering APIs. In addition to skinning, Curl now supports alpha blending and antialiasing. This should really help developers create engaging and interesting interfaces.

0 Comments 0 References Permalink Tags: enterprise_ria, ria, programming, news_&_reviews, tools

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Mozilla Labs announces Prism for Mac and Linux

Posted by marc Nov 4, 2007

An initiative in the Mozilla Labs called Prism seeks to put web applications on the desktop, running in their own application windows and behaving more like a rich client application than when run in the browser chrome. It's an interesting idea from a user experience perspective and we'll be keeping a close eye on this project. Prism was initially available for Windows only but has now been released for the Mac OS X and Linux platforms as well. The Mozilla Labs web site describes Prism like this:

Mozilla Labs is launching a series of experiments to bridge the divide in the user experience between web applications and desktop apps and to explore new usability models as the line between traditional desktop and new web applications continues to blur. \\ Unlike Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight, we're not building a proprietary platform to replace the web. We think the web is a powerful and open platform for this sort of innovation, so our goal is to identify and facilitate the development of enhancements that bring the advantages of desktop apps to the web platform.

A bit further down the page, they add:

Prism isn't a new platform, it's simply the web platform integrated into the desktop experience. Web developers don't have to target it separately, because any application that can run in a modern standards-compliant web browser can run in Prism. Prism is built on Firefox, so it supports rich internet technologies like HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and <canvas> and runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. And while Prism focuses on how web apps can integrate into the desktop experience, we're also working to increase the capabilities of those apps by adding functionality to the Web itself, such as providing support for offline data storage and access to 3D graphics hardware.

It's an interesting notion and one that has a number of aspects that resonate with the capabilities available today in Curl - from both a development and deployment perspective.

There's some interesting conversation around the announcement already. In an article in the New York Times, Adobe's Mike Chambers, the project manager for AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) is quoted (from his personal blog) as taking some umbrage at the way Mozilla is positioning their effort relative to Adobe's (as well as Microsoft's Silverlight).

"The thing I found odd was Mozilla appears to be building something very similar to Adobe AIR (which is fine and cool), but somehow it is inherently good when Mozilla does it, and inherently evil when Adobe does it," Chambers responded. "AIR is built on top of Web standards and can run existing Web applications and content. It runs on Windows and Mac (and soon Linux), and it also provides additional desktop functionality.

"Is the main difference ... that AIR is being primarily developed by a company, and that Prism is being developed by Mozilla?"

ZDnet's Ryan Stewart, who is also an evangelist for Adobe AIR, also has concerns about the way Mozilla is positioning their effort. This should prove to be an interesting conversation to watch develop. Ultimately, all of these efforts have a long way to go before they'll be ready for serious use in the enterprise.

0 Comments 0 References Permalink Tags: enterprise_ria, open_source, programming, ria, tools

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Interactive Visualization - Future of BI

Posted by jnan Nov 2, 2007

Business Intelligence(BI) has been a growth segment in the Enterprise software space during last decade. The recent acquisitions of Hyperion (by Oracle) and Business Objects (by SAP) show their importance also. BI has been the front-end to the Data Warehousing efforts at large enterprises. Most of the BI vendors provide query and reporting to enterprise databases (inside the firewall) on pre-formatted screens on a desktop. They are deployed on a client-server architecture with very little flexibility for the user to change the look and feel or the contents visualization aspects.

Now comes two challenges. The first area is the use of "search" as a new metaphor, where context-specific search to the Internet cloud can be made to complement the current BI scope. For example, a customer might want to see latest price changes made to a competitive product while looking at their own product movement in the market to explain a dip in sales.

The second area is this notion of "Interactive Visualization". Kurt Schlegel of Gartner Group has described this phenomenon in a research report (dated 7/6/2007) as follows:

"Interactive visualization is a business intelligence (BI) platform capability that enables the display and understanding of multidimensional data, provides a wide array of visualization chart types, and enables users to accomplish traditional data exploration tasks by making charts interactive. Interactive visualization, which has been used primarily in the scientific and engineering communities, will be widely adopted to explore traditional business data during the next few years."

Curl platform is used by many traditional business customers to do precisely this form of interactive visualization. The basic architecture of compiling code on the client hardware makes it very efficient and capable of handling large volumes of data. Also the vast number of built-in functions enables rapid development. Many customers are using this Interactive Visualization as a key competitive differentiation for market success.