Most companies are dabbling while they wait for RIA capabilities to be integrated with their development environments, rather than trying to jump into the RIA technology stream on their own.
The Ajax platform used by Home&Abroad is one of the three main technology groupings used to create and run RIAs. The other two are Java plug-ins for Web browsers and Adobe’s Flash player. A slew of vendors offer toolkits within these categories, and there’s a growing list of companies – including Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) with Silverlight – that are either creating their own plug-ins or incorporating RIA capabilities from all three areas.
Ajax is based on four main standards: JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), DOM, and XHR. Google Maps is an example of an Ajax-based application. Advantages of Ajax include the seamless way it can be integrated with existing HTML Web pages and that it works well with most .Net, Java, PHP, and other Web platforms. Dynamic desktop capabilities may be added to existing Web pages without redeploying them.
Flash players from Adobe Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: ADBE) are among the most widely used RIA plug-ins. Most people have downloaded a version of Flash and used it to interact with animated content. But the platform can do much more than display cool graphics: When combined with Adobe Flex, OpenLaszlo, or other frameworks, Flash can be a powerful tool for delivering enterprise-class Web apps. Some of the largest software companies use it to distribute dashboards, loan origination utilities, and other applications. At the core of the platform is Shockwave Flash, an open standard for creating files that makes it easier for third-party vendors to develop apps.
Java plug-ins have been around the longest – they’re present on probably nine out of 10 desktops – and are used to create applets that, like Flash and Ajax apps, operate inside browsers. This helps maintain the security of the PC that’s running the application. Java plug-ins offer very complete programming environments, many off-the-shelf and open source products and libraries, and a large community of developers.
Companies across our survey cite at least 30 development tools in use across these three platforms. Some are part of a growing class of application development and deployment products, of which Nexaweb and OpenLaszlo are two examples, that support development for multiple browsers. Nexaweb also enables creation of enterprise data services and access from a PC to those services via an Internet messaging bus – a lightweight enterprise service bus that provides reliable messaging, server push, and other enhanced communication capabilities between clients and app servers. All these companies are responding to an understanding that a sexy interface will get you only so far without the ability to access useful data or other application functionality.
And not to miss an opportunity, service-oriented architecture platform vendors like Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL), SAP AG (NYSE/Frankfurt: SAP), Software AG , and Tibco Software Inc. (Nasdaq: TIBX) include the abi
lity to create and run RIAs in the user interface layers of their SOA suites. These user interfaces are then deployed as part of service-oriented business applications these vendors can support. The payoff: enabling customers of these full SOA suites to use native RIA tools to build highly functional user interfaces to their back-end Web services.
RIA's are certainly excellent for delivering much more responsive and useful Web applications out to customers, remote salespeople, and suppliers.
But, right now most identity and security for RIA's is a case of "Roll Your Own". If an organization wants to control the usage of RIA's so that only known users can use them, or to protect them against content-level attack (of which there are many for Web 2.0), they generally try to figure this out themselves.This is a recipe for disaster.
The key example of this interesting article is Home & Abroad. I played around with the site for a while, and I was't impressed by their Itinerary editing tool. It uses faceted search, but it didn't work very well. Based on industry best practices I distilled the top 10 rules for good faceted search, and wrote about this on the customer engagement weblog. I hope this is a useful addition to this article.
I read the story first here at IE, then saw it on the ('Big Screen') cover of Information Week. I get IW on Tuesday versus Mondays now so..I didn't realize how big of a report the BIG REPORT was.
Is the new on-demand web platform with the desktop-like environment enabling travel companies of all sizes to build company sites and have location-specific content currently available for a demo?
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If you’re a slightly gray, mid-level manager who travels a lot, you may be on the way up and worthy of professional respect, but one thing you most definitely are not is “cool.” Still, while today’s youth may think you just crawled out of a paleolithic cave, there may be hope. The iPad from Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) (supreme arbiter of coolness) just might make you older guys (or actually old guys like me) cool.
As we well know, the online echo chamber and its increasingly viral and social components can magnify the propagation speed and distribution of stories and rumors, whether true or false.
In his recent Congressional testimony, Dennis Blair, the U.S. director of national intelligence, stated that the U.S. is "severely threatened" by cyber attacks and that the recent Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) attacks should serve as a wake-up call.
Fatal System Error, the book just released by West-coast-based journalist Joseph Menn, is really a public policy statement written as a thriller for a wider reading public. UPDATED 2:45 PM
Smarter Collaboration: How to Thrive in a Challenging Business Environment Market conditions are changing faster than ever, and organizations need to improve their agility and adaptability in order to provide better service and improve processes. The ability to work with customers, business partners, and employees as effectively as possible - while at the same time holding down costs - is a key to success. READ THIS eBOOK
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Research shows that the youth of today like Facebook – but not blogging or Twitter. Does that mean Facebook has won, or just that it's not yet out of favor? Will all the services we see today fade into Ovaltine-or-Wheaties status in just a few years?
What kinds of companies are doing the most innovation in the data center? Turns out it's midtier enterprises that are taking the "Just Right" approach.
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