As Web services become more prevalent in the application tier and Web
application sophistication increases, alternative approaches to the
traditional Web tier are being developed. The Workstation Server product
suite by General Interface provides a refreshing standards-based alternative
for creating rich browser-based, event-driven interfaces to Web services (in
IE 5.5+ and similar browsers).
The resulting applications look, feel, and perform like thick-client software
(except there's nothing for the end user to install) by leveraging JavaScript
Objects, XML, XSL, DHTML, and Web services. For this review, we will
investigate the product suite components along with some patterns of use.
Product Overview
The General Interface Workstation Server suite consists of two components.
The core component is the Workstation Server, a fast, lightweight (less than
100K compresse... (more)
The DreamFactory suite is a mature development and execution platform for
crafting rich, event-driven interfaces.
DreamFactory picks up the UI development "gauntlet" with a thoroughly thought
out metaphor, framework, and tools whose sophistication matches, and usually
exceeds, that of the other application components while remaining
straightforward to develop in. The resulting lightweight applications run in
Internet Explorer, Mozilla, and Netscape (on the Windows and Apple Macintosh
platforms, with Pocket PC, Palm OS, and Linux versions in development).
DreamFactory Flavors
The ... (more)
sforce.com surfaces the services used by the saleforce.com CRM solution to
provide an exhaustive development platform used to integrate new
functionality and develop applications. While the services provided using
industry-standard Web services protocols (XML and WSDL) represent one of the
most complete Web service framework implementations to date, sforce.com
provides a number of additional tools to streamline the development process
by allowing developers to focus on the development of business functionality
and enabling them to work productively in the environments they are mo... (more)
Ahmed Sako is CTO at Rosenblatt Securities. His areas of expertise include distributed systems, transaction processing, application architecture and development, system analysis, and Web design.
David Lucas
Shaul Efraim
Terence Martin Breslin
Cory Marchand
David Hughes
James Carlini
John Iffert
Dan Stolts
Joe Zeto
