Curl goes offline with new version of RIA platform
May 7, 2009 —
Since the company was founded in 1998, Curl has made its rich Internet application (RIA) bones through its own programming language and Eclipse integration. Now, the company has added the ability to work with RIAs offline.
The technology that keeps Curl’s wheels spinning is a runtime environment that installs on the desktop. The platform contains a compiler that Richard Treadway, the company’s vice president of product strategy, called Curl’s “secret sauce.”
Curl’s development environment can run either standalone or as a plug-in to Eclipse. When a Curl application is developed in the Eclipse IDE, the plug-in can pass the application to the runtime environment. The source code is then compiled, and the Curl application will create a frame in the Curl runtime window. Through the plug-in, the application will report on results from compiled source code, according to Treadway.
“To the end user, it looks like a browser app, but in reality it’s a desktop app running on the Curl runtime environment,” he said. “The advantage of that is we’re not competing for browser resources here, and we can communicate with anything on the back end, whether it’s an app server, some sort of Web service, or SOA back end.”
Treadway claimed that the size of Curl applications is usually very small, which results in applications starting up very quickly. The ability to run an application offline is also common to Curl’s RIA competitors Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight and Sun JavaFX.
Another main component to Curl’s technology is the Curl programming language, which is used to create applications. It is specifically designed for building graphical user interfaces. The Curl language offers the ability to create 2D and 3D graphics, as well as the ability to create applications that use enterprise data and mashups from multiple sources.
With Curl 7.0, a developer has access to client-side databases using the open-source SQLite database engine. Data can be stored on the client when Curl is disconnected from the Internet, and then it can update that data when there is Internet connectivity again, Treadway said.
“In our world, it isn’t so much the guy who is on an airplane and isn’t connected, it’s more business-critical applications that have to continue working even when they’re not connected,” Treadway said.
Additionally, Curl 7.0 offers Web-enabled demo applets that run standalone on the desktop, as well as a new applet installer that creates shortcuts on the desktop and start menu.
Related Search Term(s): Curl, RIAs
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