Curl Blog

Ajax Disappoints Power Users

richard — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 23:45:48 GMT

A recent Forrester research paper by Stefan Ried examines how new RIA Ajax based applications are being accepted in the business community.

Stefan notes that "a great user experience is one of the most compelling and important characteristics of a modern business application." As Ajax based business applications are becoming more common his research shows that their interfaces tend to frustrate powers users. Power users are used to high performance extremely interactive client-server applications and are easily frustrated by Ajax based applications.

Stefan details a list of Ajax's shortcomings as a platform for enterprise business applications. These include slow performance, inability to deal with large complex displays and inconsistency between browser platforms.

To all you Ajax folks who have experienced these shortcomings first hand, you should check out Curl! Curl offers the high performance of client-server applications, easily handles complex displays with large datasets and runs on Windows, Linux , Mac.

Richard

Technologies Of The Future

richard — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 07:20:37 GMT

That last keynote at WEBBuilder 2.0 featured Jeffrey Hammond speaking about key trends in Web2.0 adoption in the enterprise. There was lots of really interesting data that makes the compelling case that 2008 will be THE infection point in the adoption of Web2.0 in the enterprise. Regarding Web2.0 adoption Jeffrey's message was clear:

"The Future is NOW"

Through his research and discussion with clients and vendors he predicts a "perfect storm" as changes in workforce, software, business process and design collide.

One of the key drivers is 70-80% of GenYers create content and use Internet and mobile apps in all their interactions - virtual and real. As they enter the work force their expectations of a productive environment will drive change faster then ever before. Some other interesting points.

47% of surveyed CIOs see Web2.0 as more than a passing fad
70-80% GenXers and GenYers are creators of content as compared to only 12% for Boomers
1 out of 12 employees is blogging
The Web has brought people closer - In his research Jeffrey uses Linkedin and he has never looked up a person that was less than 3 degrees away. Remember the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon...
Web2.0 is is creating the 4th major programming model - Dynamic applications - these are assembled "just in time" Mashups from parts that are ready to use. This is the process savvy mashup.
32% of enterprises are using or considering RIA

All in all there is a lot of positive trends that say it will be a good year for RIA adoption and Curl.

I asked Jeffery to send me the slides and will follow-up with a more thoughtful post after the conference.

Richard

Thoughts on WEBBuilder2.0

richard — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 18:57:19 GMT

It's day 2 at the WEBBuilder 2.0 Conference here in Las Vegas. This is our first time at this conference. Compared to the buzz and hype of Web2.0 Summit and Office2.0 this conference is very low key. Attendees are here to learn in detail about how they can improve their on-line properties. Speakers are not the trend setters but the teachers and doers of the web building world. Sitting next to me is Jeanne Morton from Avon who is here to learn how Avon can improve the way they do business with their partners. Much of Avon's systems are old and the company is very conservative and reluctant to open up to Web2.0 technologies and social networking.

Given the audience, Scott Deitzen's first keynote, a sales pitch for Zimbra seemed off the mark. It is interesting that Zimbra struggled to implement their email application in Ajax - some 250,000 lines of code. To handle off-line they wrote a fat client. Isn't this back to a client-server solution.

There must be a lot of companies like Zimbra that think their only option is Ajax and struggle to make that work. We need to be on a mission to explain there are other RIA options like Curl. Hopefully our work with Forrester will help. We'll see today as Jeffrey Hammond is presenting "Technologies of the Future." I sure hope he mentions Curl.

I thought Mark Lucovsky's presentation on "Interactive Search Applications" was on target for the conference audience. Mark's is currently at Google and his background includes more than a decade at Microsoft. Microsoft understands better than any company how to talk to developers and Mark showed that competence in his delivery. Google's view of the lowest level of web developer is "someone that can cut and paste." This is indeed lowering the bar but you can immediately see the power in that paradigm. Mark went through a host of Google Ajax routines that any one can cut and paste into their web page and create sophisticated full function web applications. Google is now creating wizards that prompt you for defining parameters then generates the java code for the function. From there you simply cut and paste and viola - your web mashup! We should look at doing something similar with our Ajax wrapper for Curl functions.

On to Jeffrey's presentation.

Richard

Curl V6 & Enterprise Mashups

richard — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:01:22 GMT

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