ICEsoft Releases AJAX Tool for the Enterprise

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Thursday, July 20, 2006; 03:59 AM

ICEsoft Technologies, Inc. released ICEfaces Enterprise Edition v1.0. ICEfaces is an integrated Ajax application framework for Java EE that extends JavaServer Faces, enabling Java developers to easily create and deploy thin-client rich web applications in pure Java. The new solution uses Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX), a technique for developing interactive Web-based applications that have the richness of conventional software programs residing on the user’s PC.

“ICEsoft offers the most elegant way to develop rich Internet applications in Java”, claims Steve Maryka, CTO. “With well over 25 man years of development effort invested, ICEfaces is the only standards–based solution that implements Ajax capabilities without requiring the application developer to write any JavaScript code.”

With ICEfaces, application logic is completely server resident, and incremental changes to the presentation are delivered to the browser and reassembled using a lightweight AJAX bridge ("Thin Ajax client"). With ICEfaces, Java developers can do what they do best - develop rich, thin-client Java applications while eliminating the proliferation of JavaScript code.

In contrast, other rich Internet solution providers generally implement application richness through client-resident JavaScript. As user interface complexity increases, additional JavaScript is required in the implementation, which can dramatically increase development, testing, and maintenance efforts. Furthermore, implementing application logic in JavaScript can result in long page loading times, impair searchability of the page, and can compromise source code security.

Additionally, ICEfaces supports Ajax Push technology which allows presentation changes to be efficiently pushed directly from the server to the client. The server-side application can interact with a wide range of existing back-end data tier services and asynchronously send dynamic data back to the application UI without requiring user interaction. Ajax Push technology is incredibly powerful, and delivers a new level of application dynamics that other Ajax approaches cannot duplicate. Ajax Push is a standard feature of ICEfaces, and it can be leveraged entirely from Java application logic, eliminating the need for some inefficient polling mechanism implemented in JavaScript. ICEfaces and Ajax Push truly enable a new class of dynamic rich web application, where the user has an instantaneous view of the dynamic data they are interacting with, and paves the way for multi-user collaborative applications that were previously unachievable with a lightweight web model.

With ICEfaces Community Edition (CE), developers can build and deploy rich Internet applications at no cost. The ICEfaces community is thriving, counting well over 4000 members since the first CE release in April. The Enterprise Edition (EE) is a commercial upgrade that goes beyond the basic features of CE, and adds enterprise-class scalability and robustness, as well as several enterprise-level support options. Specifically, ICEfaces EE adds the following additional features to the Community Edition:

* Advanced Connection Management: Provides connection heartbeating to maintain connection health, and provide additional connect status indicators. Also supports redirection in face of lost connections.

* Asynchronous HTTP Server: Provides Enterprise-level scalability for ICEfaces applications that leverage Ajax Push technology and asynchronous mode deployments. A powerful feature that is unique to ICEfaces.

* Clustered Deployment Support: ICEfaces applications can now be deployed in clustered environments. Specifically, ICEfaces Enterprise Edition now includes a BroadcastRenderManager capable of performing Ajax Push across multiple nodes in a cluster, and documented configurations for clustered deployments of ICEfaces applications.