Sharon Gaudin and Frank Hayes
10/28/96
Oracle Corp. and Powersoft Corp. are getting into the moving business moving client/server applications to the World Wide Web.
The software giants next week will separately unveil products that can port client/server applications to a server so they can be accessed from a Web browser.
Users and analysts said the products will save developers a lot of time in their rush to put applications on the Web.
Simpler process
Oracle, in Redwood Shores, Calif., will announce Developer 2000 for the Web at Sun Microsystems, Inc.'s network computer unveiling in New York (see related story, page 8).
Powersoft, a subsidiary ofSybase, Inc., will release itsInternet Developer Tool Kit for PowerBuilder at the SoftwareDevelopment '96 Conference in Washington.
"Giving access to the information from a browser simplifies things dramatically for us," said Michael Prince, chief information officer at Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse Corp. in Burlington, N.J. Prince uses Oracle's Developer 2000 first for in-house applications and then for Internet access.
But sometimes the tricky part is moving those applications to a browser-accessed server.
Without porting tools, moving the application would require a time-consuming programming effort and may mean having to learn a new language, such as Java.
"With these products, you don't have to learn a new language. That's going to save people a lot of time," said Evan Quinn, an analyst at International Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass.
Powersoft's tool kit has the following key features:
A PowerBuilder Window Plug-In that lets developers move applications to the Web.
A Data Window Plug-In to access reports on the server from a browser.
Two class libraries, one to handle data management and one to build custom Hypertext Markup Language forms.
A Personal Web Server packaged in the box so users can start developing as soon as the software is installed.
"It's a full-shopping-cart application," said Cecil Craft, president of Craft Enterprises, Inc. in Irving, Texas, which sells National Football League (NFL) merchandise on the Web.
"I took PowerBuilder for the Web and built my application for the NFL catalog in between 200 and 300 hours. Considering the alternative of doing it in Java or C++, that [development time] is pretty trivial, he said.
Slimmer clients
Oracle's Developer 2000 was designed to move applications off the Windows desktop to the server.
It also includes a Developer 2000 software server that will sit on the middleware server, which allows the Web browser to run applications.
"It's a dynamite product," Prince said. He said Oracle's Developer 2000 lets him significantly slim down his fat clients, which allows the applications to run faster.
Quinn warned that both products are just intermediary steps because they offer only emulation of applications.
"They don't provide any strategic leap of technology. Neither company will be able to rest on these laurels for too long," he said.
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