I just posted an interview on InfoQ.com discussing the Curl RIA platform.  Curl sounds like a pretty nice set of technologies, it includes the programming language, IDE, and client-side runtime.  It sounds like a very similar model to Adobe AIR and Flex in terms of how they break things up and the programming model.  I haven’t had  a chance to use Curl yet, but they claim to be superior to Flex in performance and security.

I was a bit struck by how much they highlight their benefits in contrast to Adobe Flex.   I guess that is a sign that Flex is really a top dog in the RIA market.   Curl is more focused on the enterprise niche, and they don’t expect to see the Curl runtime on every computer in the world.  So, it fits more in environments where the deployment environment can be controlled. Check out the interview to learn more about Curl.

I have been working on a case study with Claude Courbois of NASDAQ for a few months now. We finally finished it up and published it over at InfoQ.com. NASDAQ has a very cool application, Market Replay, which utilizes AIR (desktop) & S3 (data). I am personally fascinated by how much the world has changed, as the platforms allowed NASDAQ to roll out an enterprise application with very minimal hardware infrastructure.

These technologies, and the other platforms like them, are important to all technologists, as I believe that their innovation will really mean more opportunities for our entire industry. They are enabling us to bring to market many ideas that were previously too difficult or costly to implement.

My boys over at InfoQ just posted the big news!!!  With JavaOne around the corner, SpringSource released a non-JEE application server. Spring founder, Rob Johnson, explained the main motivations for the release:

“Rod pointed to a number of pain points with today’s current development/production environments such as the duplication of meta data across configuration files, the fact it is common for projects to in essence deploy a server on top of a server (deploying your application along with many tools and frameworks in the same deployable unit), meanwhile they were mostly using only the web container portion of their appserver. SpringSource as a result wanted to provide a simpler platform based on today’s development needs.”

The Spring Framework was game changing when it came out and started to take over a large portion of the J2EE market,  to the point where many projects really only use Tomcat now – along with the different POJO frameworks.  So, this may be a revolution that has already happened, but it is still very interesting.   I cannot wait to see how the Java world reacts.

Adobe’s James Ward and I just finished up another Flex Top 10 for InfoQ.com, this one outlines the common mistakes when building Flex applications. I am happy with how this one came out, as it is packed with loads of good content. Check it out to learn how to make your Flex applications even better.

I just finished up a post on Flex and the Open Web for InfoQ, summarizing Adobe’s Ryan Stewart’s response to critiques saying that Flex breaks the open web. I understand that Adobe has to do their best to win over the entire software community, but I for one care little about standards. They do have a role in the industry, and I wouldn’t throw them out all together. However, I think any claim that they will lead us to the future is simply wrong. Standards can only capture the lowest common denominator, and rarely if ever lead to innovation. They are the rear view mirror of what has already happened in the industry.

We need to look no further than the JCP for an example of how standards have failed the industry. The JCP sounded amazing on paper, but the reality was countless specifications that didn’t work. Is anyone still using EJB? Of course, but they are using EJB 3.0 – the rewritten specification that captured the innovation that happened outside of the standards process. I cannot think of a truly successful JSR where that isn’t how it came to be…

So, do standards matter when it comes to Flex? I would say yes and no. First off, the Flash Player is a defacto standard and the closest thing the Internet has to a truly ubiquitous runtime on the desktop/browser (Windows, Mac, and Linux). This brings us back to the lowest common denominator. If you are building an application that has to be available on all desktop and mobile platforms, they really should be using standards based technologies to ensure all of your users can access the application on the latest and greatest. On the other hand, if you are building an application for consumption through a traditional browser (or desktop with AIR), then you really should be considering Flex or some other rich client runtime (Silverlight, Java, etc…) – otherwise your users are missing out.

As with all things, it is important to choose the right technologies for what you are building, but don’t be afraid of platforms that go beyond the standards. In contrast to what seems to be the common wisdom, it is unlikely that the platform vendors are trying to screw you by including advanced features that are outside of or beyond the standards – they are probably just trying to give you the features that you need to succeed for your stakeholders.

I attended the Java Posse Roundup in Crested Butte last week. It was interesting to hear discussions on so many different topics. My favorites were ‘Why are Open Source People Such Weirdos?’ and ‘Overview of JEE.’

There were good conversations on RIA too, but generally a lot of agreement. Agreement is good, but doesn’t always make for interesting conversations. Although, it was interesting to hear a general excitement for what is now possible with the RIA platforms (Flex/AIR, JavaFX, Silverlight, and GWT), most everyone seems to have a wait and see attitude towards JavaFX.

You can read my InfoQ.com write-up on the conference and OpenSpace format at: http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/03/javaposse-roundup-2008.

Congrats Adobe on the production releases! The new Open Source BlazeDS project and Flex Builder 3 are also a part of this release. Check out the InfoQ.com write-up that Scott Delap posted tonight: http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/02/air-flex-release.

It sounds that there are a number of cool customer applications shipping with this release.

To learn more about the products I was able to do a couple of interviews with the Adobe team. I interviewed Kevin Hoyt and Mike Rozen on AIR 1.0. They shared an overview on AIR, details on the programming model, and a number of technical details on the platform.

There are certain use cases that are perfect for AIR. For example, an office productivity app that might normally be accessed through browser, such as an SAP-type application, could also be offered in Adobe AIR. It could have an identical user experience in the browser as with Adobe AIR, but could be used while the user is disconnected from the network or moving from one location to another. Also, online applications that are usually only accessible through the browser, can be available on the desktop via Adobe AIR. Plus, since AIR applications are built with same technologies used to make browser-based apps, the time and effort to extend the app to the desktop is minimal.

I also got to catch up with James Ward on Flex 3. Last year, he shared a number of details on the development framework. So, in this interview we went over a number of items from open source to other technologies in the Flex ecosystem.

Congrats again Adobe, and Thanks Kevin, Mike, and James for sharing more details on the platform with me and the InfoQ.com readers!

I just posted an interview with Granite Data Service founder Franck Wolff. You can check it out on InfoQ.com at: http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/02/granite-data-services.

A few interesting items:

- I have used GDS a bit, but I didn’t realize that there Hibernate support allow for using lazying loading in the Flex clients. This sounds very powerful and I am excited to check it out.

- He had some interesting thoughts on the possible negative impacts RIA might have and, how GDS can help address them:

I think that with the new RIA developments we face the risk of going back fifteen years ago from an architectural point of view, when the client/server paradigm was dominant. This trend could bring us to stateful clients interacting with stateless servers (i.e. a simple database front-end). While this architecture may be possible and viable for small Flex applications, I think this is not the best choice for large applications.

Thanks Franck for the interview and for the significant open source contribution.

I did a write-up yesterday on InfoQ.com about the OS integration limitations of the AIR platform. Mike Chambers of Adobe offered up some ideas on how to work around this issue, which seem to start a flame war with Scott Barnes of Microsoft. Regardless of the religious war, I do believe this is a significant issue for the AIR platform, which will need to be addressed sooner rather than later.

Checkout the InfoQ.com post at:  http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/01/adobe-air-native-os-integration

I just published a piece on InfoQ.com about the Flash Player being proprietary. I personally find this to be a funny issue. It really seems like a non-issue to me, as the plug-in has a long history of being improved and available. It seems unlikely that Adobe would just rip it away. I am hoping to see some responses on the post though, as I am curious to see if this is a concern out there.