A New Development Sweet Spot?

By Richard Karpinski

Building an online configurator is no small task -- especially for a global company like Mercedes Benz. When Web development shop G+A Electramedia proposed to build a car configurator for Mercedes Canada using a relatively low-end, rapid application development tool like Macromedia Cold Fusion, skeptics said it couldn't be done.

The carmaker and its Web shop not only pulled it off, but the thing was so slick it drew the attention of other Mercedes divisions. The catch? Corporate development standards required apps to be built on heavy-duty application servers.

Was the project dead? Not quite. A new version of Cold Fusion, unveiled this week after years of development, can run the tag-based RAD tool on top of Java application servers like IBM WebSphere. "We could say: 'You use WebSphere, no problem, we'll write it in ColdFusion and spit it out as Java and bang, you can run it on WebSphere,' " said Bruce Meikle, CTO of G+A Electramedia. "It's let us integrate with higher level, more strategic infrastructure decisions."

In most circles, it was the new version of Macromedia Flash -- and its promise of more interactive Web content -- that drew most of the attention in this week's MX launch. But what caught our attention was the end-to-end integration of the MX product line -- from authoring tool up to application server -- and the repositioning of the vendor into what looks like a new development niche that sits between Web design and application development but draws heavily from both worlds.

To fuel its entry into this new niche, Macromedia this week also cut development and co-marketing deals with IBM and Sun Microsystems, to get its ColdFusion MX application up and running on their Java application servers. The deals -- along with new ColdFusion functionality -- define a new role for ColdFusion as a rapid development tool that can also take advantage of underlying Java and .Net infrastructures, not to mention emerging XML and SOAP resources, said Jeremy Allaire, CTO of Macromedia.

"There's a definite effort under way in the industry to the Java platform to be much more approachable to RAD developers and scripting developers," said Allaire, noting that Macromedia is also shipping a ColdFusion Web services engine, built in partnership with IBM and the Apache group, that will further extend the ColdFusion MX platform. "The industry has latched onto the idea of software as a service. [MX] is a real change in the role we're trying to play in the industry."

For Sun and IBM, the ColdFusion integration brings new capabilities to their Web development product lines.

"It does fill a need. We don't have an equivalent to Dreamweaver or a front-end scripting language," said Patrick Dorsey, group product manager for the Sun ONE application server. "Now it's going to be much easier to take core J2EE and portal technology, and integrate it with apps developed with ColdFusion."

Indeed, whether it's new tool sets like the more integrated MX Web development family, new Web services composition tools, or emerging enterprise portal publishing tools that hide the complexity while allowing regular users not only to publish content but also to create and consume Web services, application creation is getting more distributed, and more democratic, than ever before.

• Enterprise developers are getting better RAD tools in both the Java and .Net environments. BEA System's WebLogic Workshop has gotten a lot of attention in the Java world for its more visual, RAD take on Java and Web services development, while Microsoft's VisualStudio .Net family brings even Visual Basic developers into the world of Web services.
• Web services themselves, by pulling code and data from disparate sources, can allow users to create new applications almost without even realizing it. Google's recent -- and much-hyped -- decision to open up SOAP interfaces into its search engine spawned an array of quickie applications from developers and just plain regular users thrilled with the idea of programmatic access to this powerful environment. It shows the power of application composition.
• So-called blogging tools like Radio Userland and Blogger, along with emerging peer-to-peer platforms like Groove, are evolving into relatively easy-to-use front-ends -- back-ended with sophisticated distributed computing technologies like SOAP interfaces, RSS engines, and P-to-P messaging infrastructures.
• Enterprise portal vendors have emerged as an intriguing new presentation layer for application development in the enterprise. New portal platforms from IBM and others -- along with new supporting portal standards -- make it easy for developers and individual users to morph so-called "portlets" into Web services, and vice versa. And all of these mini-applications can be easily added and deleted to the portal user interface, which suddenly puts nearly every enterprise users in the app composition business.

Those are just a few examples. But it's an interesting trend. There was a time when the so-called presentation layer of the development stack involved patching together few online screens or forms. The Web raised presentation to an art (some would say a kludgy, unholy art, but that's another story).

Now, rapid development and composition tools and new application paradigms promise to bring new flexibility to application development.