Imperial Software Technology Ltd yesterday announced version 2.0 of its Visaj application builder software designed to enable developers to write Java-based applications, with a standard interface, on any platform. The UK company, which also operates out of Palo Alto, California, develops software that enables developers string pre-built components, typically Java beans, together into one application. One of the software’s key selling points is a graphical user interface which IST claims makes application development faster and much more intuitive than before. A graphical palette of Java beans is displayed down the left-hand side of the screen and developers can select the required component, by clicking on it, to assemble the application. Like Visaj 1.0, the new version is written entirely in Java and runs on all platforms including Unix, Windows NT, Windows 95 and Apple Macintoshes. What’s new about this update is that it also includes native support for Sun Microsystem’s Java Foundation Class (JFC) Swing components: a set of tools that makes the final application look and feel the same regardless of the platform its running on. Not the same when using the old version, according to Derek Lambert, IST’s president and CEO: Visaj 1.0 was fairly limited, he said, You could write the application to any platform but it would look and feel different on each. But incorporating Sun’s Swing technology does away with that. Lambert added that the market for pure Java applications was still very much at the cutting edge. He said it had mainly started to take off in niche market areas, like the financial sector, where companies are using Java to develop software that will give them a competitive edge. But he predicted that, in time, enterprises would start to split their applications to create a two-tier system whereby backoffice applications would continue to be developed in the same way as today but front-end, client interfaces (be they PCs or NCs) would be written in Java.
