News

Quest unveils server-side Java components

• By Rich Seeley
• June 14, 2004

Aiming at the Java components market, Quest Software Inc. has released Quest JClass ServerViews 5.0, a set of server-side Java components for adding charts and reports to servlet, JSP and J2EE applications.

The product is designed to provide components that Java developers can use to quickly add charting and reporting capabilities to applications, said Jeff Zado, director of JClass product marketing at Irvine, Calif.-based Quest. Rather than building those capabilities from scratch, the Java components provide professionally designed charting and reporting capabilities that can be dropped into an application, he explained. For organizations that want to do custom work, Quest sells the source code for the components so developers can do tailor-made modifications, he added.

In cases where the development team can use the components, he said the savings in project time and money make it an attractive alternative to custom development.

'We're not saying developers couldn't build charts,' Zado told JDT. 'However, when you look at the cost/benefit trade-off here, there is no development company out there -- even offshore -- that could build the functionality inside of charts at the cost we sell it to our customers.'

Quest's announcement of the new product includes a supporting quote from Mark Driver, vice president and research director at Gartner Inc., who wrote: 'Java components are a proven technology and a great way to quickly add high-quality functionality to server- or client-side Java applications. IT developers creating servlet, JSP or J2EE applications should look for 100 percent pure server-side Java component libraries that are designed to work with J2EE application servers. Scalable and robust components are particularly important for high-volume web-based Java enterprise applications.'

The enhancements Quest lists for the new release include:

• New RTF output capabilities for reports in addition to Adobe PDF. The RTF format is designed for end users to open in Microsoft Word for editing. 
• A JSP (JavaServer Pages) tag library has been added to the charting component to allow users to change and customize chart properties using tags rather than having to write Java code. 
• Support for generating encrypted PDF documents has also been added to the report components.

Quest offers at 'Chart Gallery,' with examples of what its chart component can do, at http://www.quest.com/jclass/index.asp. Trial downloads of the JClass products are available at http://www.quest.com/jclass/try.asp .