News

TIBCO Sponsors AJAX for Java Project

• By John K. Waters
• January 15, 2007

TIBCO Software disclosed last week that it has become a sponsor of the Direct Web Remoting (DWR) project. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based enterprise software maker appears to be the first corporate supporter of the open-source Java communications library, which is designed for Web developers employing the AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML) scripting techniques.

Billed as "easy AJAX for Java," DWR works by dynamically generating JavaScript based on Java classes, allowing code in a browser to use Java functions running on a Web server as though that code were in the browser. TIBCO is sponsoring the project to address the need of developers to easily expose Java Objects as AJAX services and extend the use of message and event-driven SOA beyond the bus and into the Web browser via real-time AJAX services, the company says.

The DWR project was started in 2004 by Joe Walker, a UK-based independent software consultant. TIBCO, a provider of service-oriented architecture (SOA) and business process management (BPM) solutions, has said that it will work with Walker "to provide ready-made integration points" between DWR and TIBCO's General Interface, a toolkit for creating rich GUIs in a browser. TIBCO also plans to facilitate the extension of DWR so that it can function as a JBI (Java Business Integration) standard service engine and be deployed on the company's service virtualization platform, the TIBCO ActiveMatrix.

Distributed under the open-source Apache license, DWR consists of two main parts: a Java Servlet running on the server that processes requests and sends responses back to the browser, and JavaScript running in the browser that sends requests and can dynamically update the Web page. The project recently announced "Reverse AJAX," which allows Java on the server to send JavaScript asynchronously to the client.

"DWR is a rapid way for Java developers to expose Java objects as simple AJAX services without the need for additional configuration or transformation," said Kevin Hakman, director of product marketing for TIBCO General Interface, in a statement. "We have many customers already using DWR with the General Interface AJAX library. With DWR's reverse AJAX capability, messages and events can be pushed from the server to the browser so that Web applications can also have real-time notification and streaming data features."

The current stable release of DWR is version 1.1.4, which is available now for download. Project participants are currently at work on DWR 2.0.