Allaire Kicks Up E-Comm Tempest

By RICHARD KARPINSKI

The company that brought site builders ColdFusion is extending the popular Web development package to handle the higher-end requirements of e-business.

Allaire Corp. is putting the finishing touches on an e-commerce development platform, code-named Tempest, that's built on top of the core ColdFusion application server used by hundreds of thousands of Web developers. Tempest adds capabilities such as content management and syndication, rules-based security, improved application workflow and personalization.

Tempest also provides hooks to third-party applications. For example, a ColdFusion site could use data from another supplier's personalization engine to deliver tailored, dynamic content through the Tempest server.

Allaire's aim is to move its rapid-development tool up the food chain to handle enterprise-class applications, particularly e-commerce apps, said Jeremy Allaire, vice president of technology. But analysts warned that the added complexity could undermine the simplicity of a rapid-development tool like ColdFusion.

Tempest introduces an object-based coding environment that brings new structure to Allaire's unique tag-based approach to Web development. The latest addition to the current beta is a so-called Webtop that gives non-coders, such as writers and editors, a simpler interface to contribute content to Web apps.

In addition, Tempest leverages existing Allaire technologies such as Web Distributed Data Exchange (WDDX), its XML-based data exchange format. Further out, Tempest will inherit Java technology from Live Software Inc., a company Allaire recently acquired.

Hardcore coders will like the new object-oriented approach to ColdFusion development, said David Fisher, senior Web engineer for Internet developer Roundpeg and a participant in the Tempest pilot process since September.

"You can abstract some of the tedium of ColdFusion coding into a set of tags or commands you can use to manipulate objects," Fisher said. "It takes a procedural language like ColdFusion and makes it more object-oriented."

Added Ben Archibald, manager of Tempest beta customer Creative Internet Solutions West: "Finally in the Web world we can leverage those object-oriented methodologies."

Roundpeg's Fisher also gave high marks to Tempest's XML-based content syndication capabilities. "It's one of the first great uses of XML," he said. For instance, a site could easily make its content available to third parties or pull in outside content using simple XML meta tags.

Developers at Boeing Corp.'s Space & Communications Division, a longtime ColdFusion customer, recently downloaded the Tempest beta software. "It seems to have some kind of document management capability, and that type of capability interests me very much," said James Vordale, the division's manager of Web development and technology.

Vordale's team has built a knowledge-management application using ColdFusion to track technical documents. Vordale said the new capabilities of Tempest would make building such an application much easier.

Allaire's ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML) lets users embed application logic directly in Web pages via HTML-like tags. The approach appeals to non-coders and developers looking for a rapid application development and prototyping tool.

The tag-based approach has not only scored Allaire more than 300,000 developers by its count, as well as big name customers such as Autobytel, Reebok and Toys "R" Us, but it also has served as a precursor to similar development approaches in Microsoft's Active Server Pages and Sun Microsystems' Java Server Pages (JSPs).

Now, Allaire hopes to compete with e-commerce vendors BroadVision Inc. and Vignette Corp. on the high end and Microsoft Site Server on the low end. "The winners of the app server market will also have to be e-commerce platform vendors," said Jeremy Allaire.

John Rymer, an analyst with Upstream Consulting, said that while Allaire is extending its "basic low-end proposition," for Allaire that means JSPs and not full Enterprise JavaBeans support. "EJBs are way too complex for Allaire's base, and in my view Allaire is smart not to go there just now," Rymer said. "In the context of Allaire, 'enterprise' means something different than it does in the context of, say, IBM."

In addition to companies such as Art Technology Group, BroadVision and Vignette, much larger app server players such as BEA Systems, IBM and Netscape/AOL/Sun are also focusing on e-commerce development. In terms of pure Web development, Tempest also would seem to compete with UserLand Software Inc.'s Frontier, which tackles distributed Web site development and content syndication, among other capabilities.

Allaire is conducting a limited, closed beta of Tempest now. It expects to more broadly release Tempest details and code in coming weeks.

A posting by Jeremy Allaire on the vendor's support boards describes the product as a customized version of the ColdFusion server, providing "the foundations required for building and running large-scale Internet sites, e-commerce portals, and enterprise intranets and extranets."

Later, Allaire will build on the core Tempest features with additional customer management and collaboration functionality, including e-mail management and threaded discussions. The latter will come from Allaire's existing Forums product, which will be completely rebuilt on top of Tempest, Allaire wrote.

As popular as ColdFusion has been with its developer base, it's not above criticism, particularly for its difficulty in handling complex applications. "It's optimized for taking raw information and converting it into Web pages quickly, and without a whole lot of programming skill," said Christian Hall, a senior consultant at Etech Inc., an Internet application developer. "What it's not so good at is managing the complexity of an overall application."

Hall pointed to grass-roots developer efforts, such as Fusebox.org, which have devised ways to wire together more complex ColdFusion apps. Etech has devised its own object-oriented-like work-arounds as well. Said Hall: "We'd like to be able to write the really hard code in a real language like Java and use ColdFusion for what it's really good at, which is blasting out screens."

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