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Nexaweb Simplifies Ajax and Composite Application Development for Java and J2EE Designers, Programmers and Architects


May 11, 2007; 04:25 AM
Nexaweb Technologies®, Inc., provider of the leading standards-based platform for building and deploying Enterprise Web 2.0 (EW2.0) applications, announced a new set of product features designed to help Java, J2EE, Flash, Swing, Struts, JSF, and SWT software developers quickly and easily build next-generation Ajax and composite applications.

"Nexaweb is an advanced player amongst suppliers of Rich Internet Application platforms," said Alan Rodger, Research Analyst, Butler Group in a Technology Audit covering the Nexaweb Platform, published as part of the analyst company's Rich Web Applications report. He continues, "The Nexaweb Platform provides excellent, enterprise-class facilities throughout its powerful range of development and deployment capabilities, and is very strongly standards-based. The extensive representation of application elements as XML artifacts, generated automatically by the development tool, can reduce considerably the extent of expensive programming resources required to deliver advanced applications and, in largely abstracting complexity, insulate customers somewhat from the vagaries of technology change, and the long-term difficulties of application ownership."

Integration with the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) architecture has been a consistent focus for Nexaweb since its inception in 2000. This commitment to support the investment in this architecture by thousands of enterprises and the community of more than 4.5 million developers worldwide has led to a number of visionary and first-to-market technologies including the Nexaweb Universal Client Framework (UCF).

Nexaweb's UCF is a set of three rendering engines implemented in two runtimes (Ajax and Java). All of Nexaweb's clients work in the same way a Web browser works -- they retrieve a file from the server and based on the Markup in the file, render the application by creating all the necessary components to display the application.

"Nexaweb's UCF facilitates the re-use of assets from a number of other deployment environments, including Swing, .NET, and Adobe Flash. Nexaweb characterizes its capabilities as a distributed version of the classic Model -- View -- Controller (MVC) architecture, and it provides a powerful set of Java resources," continued Rodger. "The product offers an extensive degree of control as to where application logic is based and executed. In addition, the product is founded on an object-oriented, Web-oriented architecture that facilitates object re-use on both the client- and server-side."

Client-side rendering is a distinct advantage for Nexaweb and its customers for three reasons.

--  Web-framework -- Client-side rendering allows developers to use any
    Web framework that can output text in the XML format.  There are many web
    frameworks that have been created for J2EE (Struts, JSP/Servlets, JSTL,
    Tiles, Spring Webflow, JSF) and each has features and benefits that make it
    a good choice for developers.  Nexaweb allows developers to choose the
    feature from each that is best for them and use those to build Web 2.0
    applications.
    
--  Client-side processing -- Nexaweb leverages a client devices
    processing power to display the application.  This substantially reduces
    server load and increases the number of users a server can support.
    
--  Client-side library -- Nexaweb not only renders the client but also
    gives developers a robust library to handle events, receive real-time data
    and update application state. Nexaweb's client-side library handles the
    synchronization of data both client-side and server-side. With Nexaweb, if
    you change the data, even on the server, the UI will change automatically.
    

"TeamQuest began researching Rich Internet Application technologies and found that the Java-based framework provided by Nexaweb was a good fit for our developers and customer base," said Tommy Frey, software engineering manager, at TeamQuest. "The extensible plug-in architecture allowed us to utilize third party Java packages for the graphical presentation of our performance data. We also took advantage of the messaging APIs within Nexaweb's Internet Messaging Bus to simplify development. Now with the support of AJAX in Release 4.5, we have additional flexibility in the future to create new applications with this technology as well, allowing us use the same unified declarative XML markup."

"Nexaweb's technology architecture has been developed with an emphasis on giving development organizations a choice as to how they implement application functionality," said Coach Wei, founder and CTO at Nexaweb. "Unlike some frameworks and commercial products that require the conversion of XML into HTML and JavaScript on the server or the compilation of XML on the server into a binary format called SWF, we don't restrict dynamic XML creation, the use of XSLT, JSP, or any other dynamic mechanisms for creating UI structures."

Additionally, Nexaweb provides a declarative mechanism to modify the user interface using a syntax called xModify. Contained within xModify is a set of instructions that tell the client how the UI is to be modified. Developers create server-side event handlers (JSP/Servlets, Struts Handlers, etc.) as they would in HTML applications but instead of responding with the complete application state, the response is a set of xModify statements that change the client to achieve the new state.

"xModify is an important feature of our product because it allows developers to process a client request on the server and respond with declarative instructions on how to change the application state declaratively," said Bob Buffone, Chief Architect at Nexaweb. "Any DOM modification that can be performed using programmatic APIs can be performed using modification instructions (append, clone, create-document, insert-after, insert-at, insert-before, remove, attribute, remove-element, replace-children, replace, set-attribute)."

Availability

Nexaweb Platform 4.5, including UCF, is generally available today. Visit Nexaweb's Development Center at: dev.nexaweb.com to download a trial version now and join Nexaweb's developer community.

About Nexaweb

Nexaweb's Enterprise Web 2.0 solutions enable enterprises to rapidly deploy Richer, Thinner, Faster applications over the Web. With Nexaweb, building Ajax and Java UI applications that access legacy and service-oriented data systems is simple and doesn't require re-writing code. And only Nexaweb's EW2.0 solution is proven by more than 5,000 successful global deployments. Founded in February 2000 and rooted in the MIT community, Nexaweb is based in Burlington, Massachusetts. The company is privately held and funded by institutional investors. For more information, visit www.nexaweb.com or call (781) 345-5500.

Nexaweb and the Nexaweb logo are registered trademarks of Nexaweb, Inc. All other trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners. No use of a third-party mark is to be construed to mean such mark's owner endorses Nexaweb products or services.

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