LOGIN | REGISTER NOW | SUBSCRIBE
 
 
News on Monday
more>>
SharePoint Tech Report
more>>


   

 
 
Download Current Issue
ISSUE 3/15/2010 PDF

Need Back Issues?
DOWNLOAD HERE

Receive the print Edition?


 
blogs tab
Google Code turns 5
Google Code Turns 5, and adds a Paxos Algorithm to make the system more stable and reliable.
03/17/2010 11:16 AM EST

Test your Visual Studio 2010 know-how
Microsoft is offering free beta certification exams for Visual Studio 2010.
03/17/2010 11:08 AM EST

Microsoft lifts the hood on IE9
Microsoft is previewing IE9.
03/16/2010 01:10 PM EST

 

Events calendar tab
EclipseCon
3/22/2010 to 3/25/2010
Santa Clara, Calif.
The Eclipse Foundation

DevConnections
4/12/2010 to 4/14/2010
Las Vegas
Penton Media

MySQL Conf. and Expo
4/12/2010 to 4/15/2010
Santa Clara, Calif.
O'Reilly Media

High Performance Computing Linux Financial Markets
4/19/2010
New York City
Flagg Management

Informix User Conf.
4/25/2010 to 4/28/2010
Overland Park, Kans.
IIUG


 
print Printable version 
Most Read Latest News Blog Resources
Mono brings .NET to Android
At Microsoft MIX, Mono will unveil the ability to port .NET applications to the Android op...

IBM brings Rational tools into the cloud
Fifteen Rational products for managing, developing and testing on clouds are now available...

Going 'all in' on .NET as default runtime
Programmers for Windows Phone 7 will need to use Silverlight and XNA for development

Digg!  Digg
Reddit  Reddit
Slashdot  Slashdot
Share on facebook  Facebook
Share on Twitter  Twitter

Security is the focus of latest Curl platform update


By Jeff Feinman
September 12, 2008 — 
Chalking itself up as the go-to platform for enterprise-class rich Internet application development, Curl is rolling out a new beta version of its platform at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City.

Curl Nitro, the code name of the Beta 2 release of the Curl 7.0 RIA platform, comes with a new security model for applications, Curl executives said. Administrators can allow and disallow privileges for end users, and unprivileged applications can store data on local disks.

“The security model allows you to have local storage on the desktop,” said Richard Treadway, vice president of marketing and product strategy. “You can do it in a protected sandbox or you can interface to the SQLite database. Neither of those require the application to run privileged, which is an important feature.”

Curl has positioned its product as the enterprise-class RIA platform, and Treadway said Curl provides the appropriate “horsepower” for behind-the-firewall enterprise applications. AJAX is better suited for minimal client processing and Web site functions like purchasing books from Amazon.com. Curl has significant performance advantages over platforms like AJAX and Flex, Treadway said, as Curl’s runtime environment quickly compiles the application to the hardware of the client. Once the application is compiled, it runs native on the client, which he said improves its performance.

“That’s one of the reasons [why] we get higher performance on manipulation of data sets on the client than Flex,” Treadway said. “In many cases, AJAX can’t even load the size of the data set. In experiments we’ve done, we’ve scaled 100,000 records, and the load time is significantly faster when manipulating the data on the client.

“We’ve also done lots of optimizations, including the size of the applications as they’re downloaded. We have a compression and encryption for Curl applications that makes them substantially smaller when they’re initially invoked.”

The Beta 2 version of Curl 7.0 will be available for download Monday, and it has a new applet installer that installs Curl applets for offline operation. There are also dialogue boxes in Curl’s administrative console that let the user administer the application, according to the company.

Curl 7.0 focuses on making it easier to create desktop applications. Treadway said user interfaces of previous versions of Curl were obscure, so Curl has cleaned up application development and installation.

Applications created on the Curl platform run outside the browser on Curl’s runtime environment and can be installed on the desktop or the client machine. When the application is started up, it checks the Web to see if there’s a newer version of the application available.

Curl has undergone significant ownership and management changes since its inception in 1998 when it was founded by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Among the original founders was Tim Berners-Lee. Treadway said Berners-Lee and Curl’s other founders realized that they wouldn’t be able to provide a platform for creating Web applications with HTML. As a result, they invented the Curl language, which combines HTML, scripting and object-oriented programming in one environment.

The company released its first product in 2002. “The timing wasn’t the best, and the company rode the dot-com wave, going through quite a bit of investment capital, and ending up with quite a bit of success in Japan.” Treadway said.

Sumisho Computer Systems, one of Curl’s Japanese distributors, purchased the company in 2004 and took it off the U.S. market. Treadway said Sumisho had closed big deals in Japan with Panasonic, Sony, Toyota and others, and purchased Curl to protect those investments. With the resurgence of RIAs in 2007, Curl re-entered the U.S. market.


Related Search Term(s): RIA, security, Curl


Share this link: http://www.sdtimes.com/link/32858
 

Add comment


Name*
Email*  
Country     


  • Comment
  • Preview
Loading