14 DAY TRIAL // Guided by a "point and click" approach to development of Web 2.0 applications, WaveMaker released on Monday the Visual Ajax Studio 4.0. This is a development tool that requires close to no Ajax-specific programming knowledge. The platform provides the basic features under a GNU AGPL version 3 license and additional features under a commercial license.
WaveMaker, formerly known as ActiveGrid, is a San Francisco based company that provides a web 2.0 development platform called WaveMaker. The platform consists of WaveMaker Visual Ajax Studio, for developing Rich Internet Applications and WaveMaker Rapid Deployment Server, providing a Java environment for the applications to run in.
The Visual Ajax Studio features a WYSIWYG development interface which significantly reduces the development time and required knowledge. Chris Keene, CEO of WaveMaker, explains, "WaveMaker is hands down the fastest way to build and deploy Ajax applications. Web developers can use our visual studio to build point and click web applications without having to know a single Web 2.0 acronym!" Bastian Maat of SAP Belgium agrees on this. "It is literally possible to have a simple web application running in 15 minutes straight," he notes.
The framework integrates Spring, Hibernate, JAXWS, ACEGI, Dojo 1.0, offers secure authentication and supports LDAP, ActiveDirectory and POJOs. It is also very flexible regarding system configurations. The platform can run on Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003, Mac OS X and Linux with Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari browsers.
The applications created with WaveMaker can be deployed to a multitude of Java servers like Tomcat, JBoss, WebLogic or IBM WebSphere and can make use of the most popular database engines such as Postgres, MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Hypersonic DB or DB2.
The new 4.0 version can run in a browser and brings several enhancements like easy CRUD database information management through data-aware live forms, auto-discovery of web-services, unlimited undo of changes, ability to deploy applications with MAC-like look and feel and others. In addition, the applications developed with WaveMaker are compliant with CIO's architecture, security and data policies.
While professional support is not available for the open source version of WaveMaker, developers do have access to the online documentation, community forums, development wiki and FAQ pages.
