November 28, 2007
WaveMaker, formerly known as ActiveGrid, is introducing a toolset that is supposed to simplify assembling of enterprise-class Ajax applications with a new visual IDE backed by a framework. If that sounds a lot like Nexaweb or JackBe, it is, except that Wavemaker is promoting its use of open source frameworks like Spring to provide the actual glue.
While Ajax-style development has mushroomed on the fact that the scripting languages are pretty easy to use, making development easy isn't synonymous with making it fast. That is, you can all too easily mash yourself up into a corner as you paste widgets onto a screen that could have conflicting behaviors. And you can end up with a lot of code that is loosely documented, if that.
On the heels of its acquisition of TurboAjax, WaveMaker picked up the IDE piece of the package. Significantly, the company also employs two of the major committers to the Dojo toolkit project, which provides a series of widgets for Ajax style applications. But WaveMaker says its toolkit can work with other widget types as well.
The next part was the back end framework. Others, like Nexaweb, have their own internal communications frameworks that provide higher performance above the basic HTTP request/response for demanding applications.
WaveMaker’s approach is to exploit the open source frameworks around Plain Old Java Objects (POJOs) on the assumption that it is serving a largely J2EE installed base. That includes Spring for interfacing with Java objects, and Hibernate for object/relational database mapping, or persistence.
“Our output is Spring and Java applications, rather than any black box,” according to Todd Hay, vice president of sales and marketing. And its framework can also be used for simplifying exposing of WSDL or RESTful web services, or it can be used for creating basic database-driven applications in a manner approaching that of a 4GL.
The WaveMaker Rapid Deployment Framework and Visual Assembly Studio are being released in beta now, with the company expecting full release by the end of the year.
