Codenamed Alchemy, BEA said the technology will enable developers to create powerful applications using XHTML, SynchML and JavaScript. Alchemy will also allow end users running enterprise applications to work with up-to-date information and data, even though they have been offline.
BEA’s chief architect and senior vice president of advanced development Adam Bosworth demonstrated Alchemy as a proof-of-concept with his son Alex at the company’s eWorld conference in San Francisco, California, yesterday.
BEA said Alchemy would improve mobile worker productivity with a consistent, highly intuitive user interface for applications, regardless of whether the user is connected to the internet.
The universal look-and-feel is designed to simplify development, because programmers would no longer need to build applications for different sized devices, fat clients and browsers.
Alchemy comes as BEA’s Java and integration competitor IBM Corp also seeks to unify mobile and desktop, browser and fat-client based applications in its Workplace Client strategy, announced recently.
BEA positioned Alchemy as part of the company’s Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) strategy, Liquid Computing, however it is unclear how BEA will differentiate Alchemy from IBM’s Workplace Client or even existing, legacy technologies like IBM’s Notes, which provide a rich client and uses replication to ensure business data remain up-to-date when a user has been offline.
