Software application development
This blog is intended to provoke discussion and exchange between like minded software application developers, engineers, architects, project managers - and keen hobbyists too.
Thursday 18 October 2007, 11:16 AM
The Future for Rich Internet Applications
I’ve just come back from Adobe’s MAX Europe developer symposium in Barcelona. Aside from a bad case of ‘convention food overload’ – there’s only so many cold octopus canapés I can take you know – the content was really pretty compelling.
Rather than just making camp in the press-room and being fed an endless stream of “product managers” and “evangelists” to interview, I was informed that Adobe had opened up all the sessions to the press. What more excuse would any self-respecting techy need to dive in and out of as many meets as possible.
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Essentially, the theme of the moment is the new development opportunity thrown up by AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime). This cross-operating system runtime represents a technology plateau where we will witness a new breed of occasionally connected applications which put less strain on the business function, developers themselves and the IT operations department that supports them.
AIR allows developers to use their existing web development skills to build and deploy Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) to the desktop. With developers spending less time on coding but producing more easily maintainable software with more features, Adobe says the business function will see improved ROI and increased completion rates for e-commerce driven applications as they can still be accessed by users offline. The operations team in turn also benefits from smaller server loads and lower bandwidth demands.
Adobe’s senior manager for developer relations Mike Chambers recently said that AIR will empower millions of web developers to make their RIAs first-class citizens on the desktop. With the fast start up time of a traditional web application, the user does not need to start their browser to navigate the pages of the site and several are already in Beta form such as San Dimas, the codename for EffectiveUI’s RIA version of eBay. There is of course only so much the user can do before they need to go online, synchronise, update pages or complete a transaction.
Critics of AIR are keen to cite its synchronisation limitations, its security provisioning given its access rights to a user’s file system and its immaturity and unmanageability within large scale corporate networks. Indeed, Microsoft has technology developments in close proximity to Adobe’s latest brainchild and says that AIR is relatively unproven in enterprise environments. Additionally, Microsoft is keen to point out that that .NET is proven at the enterprise level while it has Silverlight to propel application solutions in this space.
Unsurprisingly, Adobe is standing its ground in the enterprise arena and states that, “In terms of AIR in the enterprise space we’re providing a solid platform and developer tools for delivering occasionally connected applications, which is ideal for traveling sales people, remote staff, field service engineers and community workers,” said Ben Forsaith, Adobe’s business development manager for developer. “With speed of development - as AIR apps are created using existing web skills - ease of installation, desktop integration and local data storage, we believe AIR addresses a lot of challenges currently faced by enterprise developers,” he added.
Looking at the practical aspects of working with AIR, its HTML engine is WebKit and this is technology that, according to Adobe, allows anyone with basic web development skills to create a desktop application. Adobe’s goal is to maintain complete compatibility with existing WebKit implementations so that use of WebKit does not result in a new HTML engine that developers have to account for. The company has also become a member of the WebKit community and actively submits fixes and changes to the WebKit project for consideration.
“Flash has carved a niche in the web space and as people begin to look for easy ways of creating functional components, they may naturally turn to technologies that they know,” said Clive Longbottom, service director, business process analysis at Quocirca Ltd. “However, although it is cross-platform, Flash is not that easy to use, so is not a mash-up tool for the average business user and is not seen as being a ‘real’ tool by enterprise developers, who will look to .NET and J2EE for this. RIAs may well become part of the solution, but I feel that this will be a hybrid approach as so much Flash usage is on web sites – therefore it does not create the whole environment, just certain parts. AIR + .NET or AIR + Java/J2EE would seem to make a lot more sense and would tend to keep everyone happier.”
In truth, the RIAs emerging today are a quantum leap ahead of their predecessors. The online collaborative word processor offering from Buzzword.com is built with AIR and displays sophisticated zoom and colour functions previously unseen on the web. Similarly, EffecttiveUI’s home page is testament to why the term ‘rich’ has was chosen in the first place.
The next logical step for this technology would be for these applications having moved from the web to the desktop, to finally be able to extend to mobile. It’s no coincidence then that mobile deployment is currently in development and may be no more than eighteen months away. At the desktop itself, we have moved from plain old web pages to RIAs and now to first stage Beta for lightweight desktop applications such as San Dimas, the next move must be to native applications with a heavyweight install for offline operation. This ‘final’ tier of development is on the roadmap and may be around before the end of the decade.
Tuesday 16 October 2007, 11:30 AM
MAX Europe
For the first time in Europe, Adobe is hosting its MAX developer symposium in Barcelona this week. Below are a few distilled key pointers from the keynotes, sessions, briefings and roundtables I’ve been dipping in to over the last two days.
The four key industry trends of importance in the Adobe world are explosion of digital content, spiralling Internet usage, proliferation of connected devices and new business ideas.
Coming as this does straight after MAX USA it was difficult to separate the repeat news from the “new news” so to speak. That said, new to the party this week is the Adobe Developer Connection - a portal for developer and designer resources designed to fuel the next generation of RIA (Rich Internet Application) development. It’s at http://www.adobe.com/devnet/
Adobe is building in support for the H.264 video compression standard within Flash – and also in the pipeline is the desktop video player Adobe Media Player. The next generation of Flash Player (codenamed Astro) was previewed - this will ship with advanced text layout support that will be capable of handling bi-directional text and will support the word wrapping rules of languages such as Hebrew, Arabic and Japanese, which do not follow standard English.
Also announced: Adobe Scene7 open APIs (these enable developers to build custom rich media applications with dynamic imaging); and a new file sharing service (SHARE Beta preview) for users to share, publish and organise documents online.
With so many attendees (1200 I understand) and some 210 sessions, it’s interesting to see the presentations pitched at so many different levels. While some are quite heavily simplified, the hour devoted to SWX - the native data format for the Flash Platform – was fairly conceptual and left many attendees seemingly still interested but none the wiser.
Big news on day two is Abobe’s new relationship with the BBC for delivery of web video. The Beeb has adopted Flash Player software to drive its free catch-up TV service BBC iPlayer - available as a streaming service across Macintosh and Linux, as well as Windows, by the end of year.
All this, plus octopus at every meal break – breakfast, lunch and dinner. I kid you not.
Friday 12 October 2007, 11:18 AM
Taking power out of developers’ hands?
This morning I’ve heard about yet another: “giving power to business users rather than developers,” story. While I can see the benefits of involving the business function in an ever more tightly integrated relationship with IT, I have to sometimes question the loss of direction these sharing tools could bring to the party. Hell, what was the requirements phase for in the first place?
Typically, these “solutions” fall into the realm of Business Process Integration (BPI) or Business Intelligence and today’s news is no exception. LANSA’s Composer (let’s give them some credit, these guys are a very successful exporter of software from Australia) is indeed a BPI product that can be used by business users rather than developers. It promises to automate manual processes, integrate internal systems and securely share data with external parties.
OK OK, I get it – these products are increasingly popular and the fact is that over 5% of all U.S. Internet room sales are made with a LANSA-based product. Crucially, for me, if BPI products are used to automate manual processes then I don’t have an issue. But I’ve heard Business Objects and indeed IBM talk about these technologies in a wider sense. They talk about a new work role – someone who is not a developer and not a business manager. This guy (or girl) is a “business technology analyst” and can be assigned responsibility for changing the direction of the application lifecycle.
I’m not saying it’s happening now, but I do wonder if some of these automation tools are putting us on the slippery slope where true developer software engineering expertise is side-stepped. Is this is case of ‘over-engineering’ or is it a good thing?
Monday 8 October 2007, 9:06 PM
Computers and Camel Meat
I’m nearing the end of my days here in Bangalore India with Yahoo and managed to get an afternoon off to walk the streets and see the ‘other side’ of Bangalore. Having seen TechParks, offices, a nice hotel and an airport – I thought it was only fair to walk the streets.
Inevitably, there is the glossy side of India’s tech-capital where wireless broadband and mobile coverage stretches as far as the eye can see – and then there is the old Bangalore. The latter is a feast for the all the senses and even features a genuine camel meat butcher. Mobile phones give way to pay phones and neon signs give way to the words “Internet 10 Rupees” painted on trees advertising low cost on the hop connectivity.
All the new software industry developments have caused a huge increase in traffic as one would imagine pollution. But the old quarters live on unperturbed none-the-less. India does have a solution for moving forward into the second generation of its IT growth and I will report on this in full soon.
Saturday 6 October 2007, 8:04 AM
Hot dog harmony
Are software developers the same all over the world? Well, if the last 24 hours here at the Yahoo! Open Hack Day in Bangalore India are anything to go by, I can give you three good reasons why engineers of all shapes and sizes all over the world share a common DNA.
Reason 1: Focus –
With a dopey case of jet lag and a complete lack of life-sustaining alcohol to keep me going, I eventually had to sleep last night. No such rest for the 200 or so coders at this venue. Fuelled by a combination of access to APIs that they previously didn’t know were open to them, a determination (perhaps) to be “noticed” by the execs here – and innumerable cans of Red Bull, these guys (and just two girls) kept going all night. With a 15-foot high countdown clock and access to architectural specialists all night long spurring them on, when I came down for breakfast this morning most of them were still going strong.
Reason 2: Technology proximity –
This is a ‘face down in the keyboard’ event. The attendees are enthusiastic, self-assured and subversively conspiratorial as they quietly plot to beat their competitor peers with an idea for the ‘next big thing’. They’re not phased either, even as Yahoo! co-founder David Filo strolls in between the tables and bean bags – nobody is stopping for autographs or brown nosing. These developers know they’re being judged on their ideas and nothing more.
Reason 3: Hot dogs –
As much as I was looking forward to a spicy chicken shaslick last night, when I got to the buffet with my glass of 7Up I was faced with a selection of Western-style potato crisps and hotdogs. Looking wistfully for some chilli sauce all I could find was ketchup. Sensing my disappointment, an Indian chap next to me smiled, grabbed three hot dogs and said, “ah, developer food!”
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