Nexaweb Intros Enterprise Mashup Tool

Nexaweb Technologies is scheduled to announce a new version of its platform for building and deploying Enterprise Web 2.0 applications, Nexaweb Studio 2.4, on Aug. 23.

Part of the Nexaweb Enterprise Web 2.0 suite, Nexaweb Studio 2.4 is an Eclipse-based IDE (integrated development environment) that lets developers leverage RIA (Rich Internet Application), SOA (service-oriented architecture), and other enterprise technologies to deliver composite business applications with a rich UI (user interface) via the Web, the Burlington, Mass., company said.

New and enhanced features in Nexaweb Studio 2.4 include Nexaweb Business Logic Development, an enhanced event wizard that guides users through the steps required to connect business logic to UI components.

Meanwhile, Nexaweb Data is a new data interface that binds UI components to data through a data component directory.

Also, the new data interface gives uses the ability to browse the content of an XML- or object-based data source, the company said.

And the Nexaweb Visual Editor features new Panel Templates that reduce the time required to develop UIs and eliminate the need for learning specific layout managers, the company said.

“With our customers in mind, we made ease-of-use and data integration enhancements our focus with Nexaweb Studio 2.4,” said Coach Wei, founder and chief technology officer at Nexaweb, in a statement.

Read more here about Nexaweb’s jRex 1.0, a server-agnostic, declarative XML user interface engine that generates enterprise Web applications.

“New wizards, interfaces and templates simplify the creation of Enterprise Gadgets and reusable components that link UI widgets to multiple Web services, enterprise data and business logic to give customers and their development teams a competitive advantage in building richer, thinner, faster business-critical Internet applications.”

Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC in Baltimore, Md., said the real meat behind the Nexaweb news is the “enterprise mashup,” where the main idea is to shift the power of the creation of business applications from the providers of service capability—the IT department—to the consumers of the business capability, or the enterprise.

“Specifically, the idea of mashups have garnered significant attention in the marketplace because it allows independent companies to consume functionality from third parties and build them into new and even more compelling applications and solutions,” Schmelzer said.

Yet, in the same vein, Schmelzer said the idea of a mashup can be applied to the enterprise to enable disparate departments in the enterprise to consume functionality from IT or other organizations and compose it into new and even more powerful applications.

Moreover, Schmelzer said the combination of RIA capabilities, spurred by AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), Adobe’s Flash, and other client-side consuming technologies, “combined with the promise of service-orientation—which takes enterprise IT functionality and exposes it as consumable, composable, loosely coupled capabilities—and emerging best practices around software as a service really make Nexaweb’s approach compelling.”

Pricing for Nexaweb Studio starts at $1,495, and pricing for Nexaweb Platform starts at $12,000. Pricing for both is based on runtime licenses per CPU.

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