Digital Harbor deals in live apps
See correction below
DIGITAL HARBOR IS taking the wraps off a development and deployment platform that leverages “smart client” technology to help build applications composed of bits and pieces of disparate back-end sources. Based on J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) and XML, the PiiE 2.0 platform’s hallmark is aggregating enterprise data sources in real time to create a “live” application in which that data is associated with processes, rules, and events pertinent to the end-user, said Austin Wells, vice president of product marketing and product management at Digital Harbor. For example, Digital Harbor is enabling one of its telecom customers that deals in provisioning services to the government to use PiiE to tailor their customer service applications based on specific employees’ needs; some workers need 60 percent access to back-end application functionality, while others only use 20 percent of a particular source’s features, such as a topology view of the phone network. The composite applications are essentially virtual, disappearing when the user is finished. Application functionality is componentized in XML and streamed from its source to the client, where its code executes, officials said. Smart client development, which essentially provides a front end for Web services, is gaining steam in the market such players such as Alteo, Droplets, Curl Technologies, and others. Digital Harbor’s solution is available in two packages: PiiE Express to enable the browser to handle live applications vs. static documents, which can then be manipulated into an interface by a business user; and PiiE Advanced, which adds the integration layer for business ontology to give back-end data context around rules, processes, and events.
Correction
In this article, Austin Wells’ title was originally misreported.
