Curl is linking RIAs (rich Internet applications) to SOA with an update to its Curl RIA Platform Version 6.0 software development technology.
The company plans to release its WSDK (Web Services Development Kit) this week, which is a productizing of open-source code released last year. It is to be included as part of the Curl RIA Platform 6.0.
Supporting both REST (Representational State Transfer) and SOAP Web services, WSDK provides components for building enterprise applications that use Web services and an XML document model to support SOA.
WSDK makes it easier to build an application that uses an RIA client to front-end an SOA, said Richard Treadway, Curl vice president of product strategy. RIA interfaces to SOA will become more important, Treadway said. "I think it's going to become increasingly important as enterprises start to use RIAs for their enterprise applications," he said. "A lot of enterprises have spent the last couple of years architecting their back-end solutions to take advantage of the SOA, and now they're looking [to determine] how do we represent complex data and large sets on the desktop, and that's where RIA technologies come in."
Curl RIA Platform 6.0 was announced last year. The product includes the Curl language for building Web applications. "It's a combination of scripting, HTML, and [an] object-oriented language," Treadway said.
The update to the platform features expanded user interface styling to provide a fresh look and feel. Version 6.0 also enables mashups that integrate JavaScript and Curl APIs.
Curl RIA Platform is available in base and Pro versions, with the Pro version offering enhancements for security, performance, and maintainability as well as the WSDK.
To broaden its development platform, Curl established a repository of open-source component libraries in 2007. The resulting three projects included WSDK, Curl Data Kit for data-centric application development, and Curl Development Utilities for unit testing and project development.
The Pro version of the Curl RIA 6.0 platform is priced at US$598 for the developer kit and US$12,000 for the runtime. The base version is free.
