WWDC1997 Session 408

Transcript

Kind: captions
Language: en
ladies and gentlemen please welcome web
objects product line manager David Kay
good evening thanks very much I
appreciate your being here particularly
given the timing establishments all over
downtown San Jose are now opening their
doors for a happy hour pricing and
instead you've chosen to spend time with
us here so it's very very gratifying or
maybe I shouldn't mention that very
gratifying Thanks what I'd like to do is
talk with you about let's give you an
overview high-level overview of the
product we've got a whole series of
great tracks that I'll mention at the
end and I hope this will give you a good
starting place for deciding which one of
those might make sense for you and a
sense of where as developers you might
have opportunities to build onto the
platform that we just announced that
we're providing you with web objects I
also want to leave enough time at the
end for some questions and answers so we
can get them you get gives us some
details there but one really cool thing
is that the products in your bags well I
mean a coupon that's good for the
product it's hot enough off the presses
but it's not actually available until
tomorrow the pre release of version 3.1
that you're getting but we think will be
very happy when you when you pick that
up and get it it runs on Mach it runs on
Windows NT Solaris and hp-ux so you can
you can take that and either in
conjunction with the other prelude to
Rhapsody pieces of Mach and the
enterprise objects framework go with
that or run on one of the other
environments it's the same CD it works
all the way around the other thing I'm
very pleased about is that our friends
and partners at open base have made a
single-user version of their open base
database which runs on mock available
that means you'll have the ability to
explore some of the power of web objects
and working with the database if you
choose to do this in the mock
environment again right right out of the
bag a little bit about where we come
from because we're do to than that
community web objects shipped in version
1.0 march 30th of last year and in 1996
we established leadership in the
the enterprise internet application
development markets really in in two
ways one and sort of establishing the
category of a web application server we
started talking to people
last March in April and and and even
even this time last year about web
application server they sort of look at
us at is funny and now people understand
the concept of a server that dynamically
bends pages sits behind a web server and
allows you to do the same things that
you can do with desktop and
client-server applications except over
the web with all of the benefits that
that brings we also provided rapid
development tools and a class of
products that integrates legacy systems
things like mainframe applications in
relational databases and existing code
bases and pulls those all together so so
that was sort of the product category
side we also had to meet success on the
market which was very gratifying
the folks at sharper image were I think
the first people up with a web objects
application they did that at the first
internet world in April last year and
they were they had this business problem
that you know catalogs this fancy
catalogs you get from sharper image are
really sort of expensive to print and
they wanted to be able to add more
products to them and expand their
offerings and increase the margins that
way but it's hard to do if you've gotta
put in glossy printed pages or add more
space in the show Michelle they wanted
to do it over the web but with all of
the changes that they were making and as
dynamic as that site was they couldn't
do that cost-effectively or easily on
the web either until web objects came
along and was able to give them a
database driven application that we as
users use to order products as well as a
internal intranet application that they
use to maintain and manage that database
that had great deal of reuse across the
base Dell kind of funny to mention at
Apple they bought the product which is
pretty smart and and of course Apple
bought next which was even smarter but
Dell does one point four million dollars
of business a day on a web objects
application that integrates mainframe
data daily changing price databases it
integrates their configure a
and software you know how hard these pcs
are to order and it allows you to to
very rapidly configure an application
that's that's a can configure one of
these one of these PCs so that's that's
great for them Nissan showing off our
internationalization has put up a
Japanese language virtual car showroom
that you can get to tan energy is a kind
of interesting one they had a
kansas-nebraska energy they sell the
pipeline space for for oil and gas and
they wanted to be able to let their
customers using an extranet application
come in and place order for oil and gas
and bandwidth whatever you call it in a
pipe and KN Energy was able to do that
in webobjects and save a tremendous
amount of money over the way that
they've been doing it before with the
service bureau give better more
responsive service to customers and at
the same time they did this right before
the government required people in this
business to use a website in order to
provide service out to out to their
customers so once they'd saved a bunch
of money using web objects they're now
making a bunch of money with web objects
by selling the application they wrote
for all their competitors so they can be
compliant so we did we did about 15
million dollars of revenue in the three
quarters that we sold last year pretty
small potatoes by the overall apple
bottom line but analysts who track our
field tell us that in the internet
application development space we were in
fact the market leader we've got this is
a little bit old now well over two
hundred and seventy-five customers who
have licensed web objects to build
applications with objects Enterprise
we've got over 50 applications deployed
on the internet along with the intranet
applications that we really can't show
off but some of which are even neater
and more sophisticated people who bought
web objects did it for three basic
reasons one is they had a problem they
needed to solve they needed to solve it
quickly the vice president of marketing
said you got to get a website up by the
end of the quarter to sell our products
or to do a customer care application or
to dynamically show today's prices and
so the fact that web object says these
rapid
element tools along with the pre-built
objects that use a developer used to
extend its functionality gave them a
great time to market advantage and they
could meet those requirements it's a
very flexible system that's easy to
maintain
unlike competitors in the web space we
don't generate code we don't have
wizards that go out generate code and
then you sort of if you want to do
something different have to hack into it
so it's hard to maintain as you've seen
probably with some of the Rhapsody
demonstrations interface builder and so
on we have the ability to hook together
objects dynamically and customize their
behavior by sub classing and extending
them we also keep the concept of the
user interface very separate from the
business logic and the data access layer
which provides another layer of
maintainability but probably most
importantly for most of the customers
that have bought live objects so far so
that we don't require when we're being
part of a solution you to throw away
some existing piece of infrastructure
sharper image and Dell both kept their
order management systems cyber slight so
if you saw Ellen and Wiley ordering a
pizza had to integrate in a GIS system
that they liked that I had never heard
of at the time they did it and and
certainly wasn't in the requirements for
web objects they integrated an Oracle
database and the voice response system
we let you take advantage of the
existing data and applications that you
have in your enterprise and don't
require you to replace them and and it's
it's actually not all that surprising
that we're in the web business because
when Tim berners-lee wanted to build a
system to let scientists CERN
collaborate he used what we now know as
yellow box in order to build the first
browser and the first server so we come
a long way from there in the web the web
actually went pretty far just as a way
of exchanging documents among disparate
computers on a network the static HTML
model that you know that most of us have
seen with home pages and other pages and
documents and and that's good but people
wanted to use capabilities like CGI's
and
and writing Perl scripts and so on to be
able to extend the behavior of the web
by adding simple forms and transactions
something that hooks off to a search
engine or something that lets you
register at a site or tells you how many
visitors have come to your page where we
see the market going where it really
seems to be starting is to go into what
we're calling live web applications real
first-class applications that happen to
use the web as their user interface
there are a couple of different ways
that people in the market are suggesting
that that we can do this one model is it
comes from the database vendors with
extensions database to web sorts of
tools and there's some other folks doing
it all the database vendors have these
those those certainly have their limits
because really everything that you're
doing is involved in the database um so
you can't integrate multiple databases
you can't easily switch databases you
can't go out to other forms of user
interface you can't integrate see code
that you've got lying around you keep
your business logic and sequel or the
equivalent another model that people
have used are by writing plugins and the
plug-in based approach really sort of
makes you question why these guys are
bothering to the web at all because it
really is just sort of all the problems
of client-server having to do with the
cross-platform issue that we're also
aware of the fact that these proprietary
plugins might not run on all your
platforms and you need to upgrade them
inversion them and so on
so rather than these two approaches what
we've taken is an open web technology
approach that's independent of browser
and the server and operating system that
you're running on and the data sources
that you're accessing in languages open
API is open open open open
so web objects is an open development
platform that lets you get quickly out
with web applications that can integrate
integrate enterprise data and
applications let me show you how the dis
fits into the context of what happens on
the web we're familiar with a standard
static web model which is that a user in
a browser makes a request to a server
for some particular URL that grabs out
some data some HTML or some maybe a
QuickTime or something like that sends
it back to the server and I'll wait for
a second to model the actual okay
Internet there we've got a response back
to that model web objects ads this
application server so behind the web
server we have an application server
that's running programs that can access
databases can access enterprise
applications and can do processing as
well as accessing all the multimedia
data that's on there and if you need
more horsepower you can roll in more
servers we handle the load balancing the
distribution that's not something that
the developer needs to worry about that
can handle at deployment time so let's
focus in a little bit on the web objects
piece and see what's inside there we've
got the application server that I
mentioned the pre-built application
component where and then the rapid
application assembly tools the
application server is what gives you the
scalability and distribution the fact
that you can run multiple processes
multiple instances of your web objects
application across one or multiple
servers on the HTTP server if you want
to on different servers if you want to
on different platforms if you want to
means that you as a developer don't need
to worry about this when you're building
your applications and the Internet in
particular allows us to generate loads
that we're really unthinkable in the
client-server days and stress the kinds
of tools and approaches that
client-server systems have employed
really passed the breaking point we also
if you've seen have a dynamic object
runtime both in the sense of Java and
the objective-c dynamic object runtime
that we've linked together with Java
which allows us to very flexibly
maintain systems add functionality to
existing systems and so on and the
interoperability with different object
models like like korba we also provide
applications out-of-the-box one piece
the application components
out-of-the-box one piece the enterprise
object framework is what handles the
transparent access to different kinds of
data source
so use the developer don't need to write
sequel you don't need to know exactly
how things are stored in the database or
have that knowledge reflected in the
code so if you change databases or if
you change schemas within a database you
don't need to change your code you just
change the model that's done with a
graphical tool we also have the tools
that abstract out the framework that
abstract out the fact that you have a
web user interface HTTP and HTML so
there's no dynamic generation of HTML
that you need to hand code no state
management that you need to worry about
you don't need to worry about parsing
HTTP requests that's all handled for you
we have web objects builder which is a
tool that you can use to assemble these
components and add your own value added
to it it's a graph of if you've seen the
interface builder demo earlier it's like
that except for the for the web project
builder which is an integrated
development environment compiler linker
debugger source code management and so
on and the enterprise object modeler
which is the specific piece that drives
the model that tells the data access
components interface the object
framework how they need to generate SQL
in order to get and retrieve data
basically you model your databases as
objects with this tool graphically model
relationships among the types of objects
and can go from there what really makes
your application go is your business
logic that fits inside this environment
so that's what's running in those web
objects server processes now when you
actually deploy it we don't require
anything at all special on the browser
so navigator Internet Explorer links the
browser that's in my Newton all work
fine with web objects and it uses normal
HTTP back to a normal web server whether
that's Netscape or iis or apache or web
star or
whatever other kind of server you have
and a half and the way that that works
is that there's a little piece of
software that we provide we provide in
source code form as a matter of fact
that you can put next to your server and
it's what does the load balancing out to
these application instances we've got a
version in cgi so that is a sort of
lowest common denominator that works
essentially everywhere we also have
custom adapters for NS API is API and as
I said we could be source code so we had
a customer do an Apache one web star API
is under development by a couple of
third parties right now and the web
server can run on on any kind of
platform this is straight C code so it's
been recompiled - you know bsd unix and
it can work with with mac OS and other
platforms this chart here shows all of
the different things that are inside web
objects and the point I'm getting to is
that web objects and the desktop
components that are inside the yellow
box really are highly common so we've
got the dynamic rub time which is
bridged to the Java Virtual Machine and
the foundation classes that run on top
of that and the distributed objects
capability that runs on top of that and
the enterprise objects framework that I
mentioned the web objects framework
which is responsible for the HTML HTTP
interaction state management so on we
also have the builder the modeler and
the project builder tools if we turn
that picture around and say well what's
in the desktop part of the yellow box
that we've been hearing about all day
it's it's about the same thing instead
of web objects framework we've got the
app kit the the user interface piece
instead of web objects builder we've got
interface builder but it's all on this
common core of technology and what that
means to you as a developer is that if
you write software in this environment
is very easy to repurpose it either to
the web or to the desktop so it's very
easy to take a desktop application
written with these yellow box
technologies and web enable it or vice
versa or to write something that as
have done with webobjects Enterprise and
openstep Enterprise write an external
application and external users can use
that uses web objects because of the
ubiquity of the web but uses for the
internal maintainer x' a desktop user
interface based on the desktop pieces of
the openstep but to use the same core of
software we talked a little bit about
the client-server environment and our
multi tier capability there when we
start out with client-server you know
can plus 15 years years ago or so what
what we all did was to tier we had a
desktop computer which would have some
business logic bundled in with a
presentation interface handling and
would also have a database server which
maybe had some business logic that was
kept as stored procedures and so this
this really sort of goddess in the hot
water when we wanted to change the
application we needed to do it in such a
way that we didn't break the interaction
between these two pieces if we wanted to
write a different application that used
some of the same business logic but had
a very different presentation for a
different kind of user we need to do
very you know careful cutting and
pasting wanted to change databases then
all of that stored procedure business
logic needed to be rolled over or the if
you change databases also a lot of the
data access logic in a desktop computer
would break so so this this wasn't so
good so people in the client-server
world moved up to you know three tier
and entir and you sometimes hear about
hyper tier and multi care and lots of
cures but but that's best basically the
problem that people were trying to solve
along the web space a lot of people who
are in this sort of application
development space say hey look we've got
an HTTP server we've got an application
server we got a desktop computer
we got a database server we're at least
four tier this is completely bogus
because the HTTP server and the desktop
computer aren't really active
participants in this game still we're
back with business logic and web
server and in the database server that
have all of the same problems that we
have in suture client-server web objects
suggests a different approach which is
to use multi tier flexible tier
computing for the web where the business
objects are completely separate from how
they're stored in the database and
they're completely separate from how
they're presented to the user so if as
customers who've used this technology in
the past if you want to do you want to
write a similar application that does
something just a little bit different
but uses the same functionality even
quoting your business objects or you
want to pull in another database you
want to migrate from a legacy database
to to a more modern Oracle or side baser
Informix you can do that and none of
your business logic which is the core of
your code none of that breaks web
objects provides a great deal of
connectivity both through the data
sources native access to Sybase oracle
Informix ODBC and through third-party
products folks who've extended our
platform the ability to access mainframe
databases we also have the ability to
connect to all of the things that make
the web a fun place to to be with
multimedia images and sounds and
animations and with web objects you can
add to the Dynamis 'ti of that by
conditionally vending different chalk
waves for example depending on what
users want or different different
quicktime zrs we also have functional
integration to Olay automation services
to korba objects and as a matter of fact
a number of our customers now have
graphed or wrapping their main frames as
Corbis services so nobody needs to know
that their main frames anymore and and
nobody has to touch them this makes a
lot of sense and it's easy with web
objects to integrate in with those
legacy systems as I've mentioned and any
code that has a compiled interface so
that you can be called from C or C++ or
two
for Java so it's important when thinking
about data the data access is not is not
all there is to it people talk a lot
about getting to data but data is really
only interesting insofar as it runs your
application insofar as it is something
against which the business object that
you have acts so data is an input it's
like a a customer's credit report by
itself isn't interesting if you're an
application developer but the business
object that contains your policy about
based on this credit report am I going
to extend credit next time that is
interesting
those are the pieces that model what
your business is and those business
objects are really a very valuable asset
once you develop them within this
environment web objects and as a matter
of fact this this whole infrastructure
allows you to easily reuse Business
Objects across the desktop web Java
client interfaces we have customers who
are taking the same business objects and
vending them out to an application
that's completely written in Java
running in the browser using i io P to
connect into the business objects so
it's very flexible you can reuse them
across applications and across data
sources because they're not tied to the
bit data and they're not tied to the
user interface they're very flexible and
easy to reuse we also then have a model
of development that is both objects and
component based which means that
different people in your organization
can build at different levels we have
object developers in an organization who
are building these core business logic
objects that you'll use in order to
model your business and can be used
across many many applications web
objects supports the model of components
which as you saw an interface builder
are the things that can be up on a
pallet to have user interface and
behavior wrapped around these
Jaques they can do particular things so
developers can create pallets of
components that they share with other
people in the organization on top of
these business objects and then
different sorts of people can use a tool
like web objects builder to assemble
these components into a working
application and graphical designers also
have the option to change the look and
feel and appearance or to create the
look and feel and appearance of your web
objects application by using tools like
the cyber studio from go-live which as
you just saw will have a web objects
editing module into it or by using other
tools so if you actually look at what
the web object itself is what drives the
application it's a it's a piece of
software that contains both data like on
this dell order a dell page the data
about how much memory you want and what
operating system you want and what
network adapter you want that's
associated then with the user interface
attributes in the HTML like these pull
downs as well as actions methods things
that you do when the user wants to do
something and those are tied into things
like hyperlinks and submit buttons as a
developer if you use web objects builder
the fact that there are three files for
each one of these pages or component is
hidden from you but if you want you can
also go in and edit these by hand what's
really happening behind the scenes is
that there is an HTML file that is
perfectly normal HTML except that we've
added one tag web object which says hey
there's something in here that's going
to be dynamically generated and or
dynamically parsed that script or code
which can tell the system what to do
when the user presses that add system to
Cart button and references that the data
that's associated with the in this case
the model number and the edges
options number and then the declaration
file which maps the HTML template
together with the scripture code the
bottom line here is because we've
separated out the code from the
presentation to the user from the file
that associates those together you as a
developer have a great deal of
flexibility and ease of maintenance it's
not like you've got a huge HTML file
that has a bunch of script dumped in it
so if you want to change the HTML file
you need to work your way through all of
that web objects also provides the
developer a choice of languages he or
she can develop in a variety of
languages much of the application code
typically is done by web objects
customers in a scripting language we've
got a language called web script that
looks like objective-c or it looks like
JavaScript where you can put application
logic in if you want to try something
out for size you can just make the
change hit reload in your browser and
see the effects so it's a very high
productivity quick turnaround
environment if you're concerned about
performance or if you need to link in to
of a particular business object you need
to link into compiled code many people
use Java or Objective C for their
business objects again as I said the
objective-c and the Java runtimes have
been bridged so you can work in one or
the other or both and intermix that with
scripting languages one of our partners
a company called tiptop has built a Perl
language that interfaces to this so you
can also use Perl as your scripting
language of choice if you want to and if
you have another compiled language you
can call two functions or methods or
libraries from within those compiled
languages right in line in your web
objects application so the developer has
a real choice of out of languages and in
most cases our developers have chosen to
mix and match languages when creating
one particular site using the languages
with the feature that's best suited
a particular piece of the application
that's being worked on a web user
interface web user interface is is okay
it's it's sort of mainframe like right
because you you get a page of data and
you fill a bunch of stuff out and you
hit submit or something that's maybe a
little bit more descriptively named and
off goes information to a web server
which in our case will then talk to an
application server which will generate a
response and send back a completely new
page that works well for some things for
other things like user input validation
that's pretty heavyweight and it rules
out all together a bunch of really
interactive user interfaces so wouldn't
it be nice if instead of taking this
approach we could bend out not just HTML
but also components that users could
work with on the browser and have a more
interactive user experience well that's
exactly what we've done by integrating
client-side Java into web objects say
for example the developer wants to put a
slider in that represents a query the
user is going to do against the database
and wants to show the result in a graph
that comes back from the from the
database we provide a component called
an applic controller it's a Java applet
that sort of sits lurks in the
background on your java page and when
you have your Java applets or
third-party Java applets whatever in
ones that we provide on the page like
that slider when the user lets up on the
slider it lets the controller know that
it's ready to have an action invoked on
the server just as if these are hit a
submit button and it's the controller's
job to package up all the information
that comes from the components that are
on the page
send them over the wire as HTTP it
effectively pretends it's the browser
and at that point the web application
server does what it would ordinarily do
come up with a response but this time
instead of having to redisplay the whole
page the response goes back to the
components that have changed State so
object synchronization
happens over there and in our case here
the users graph gets updated so with the
user side I talked for a long time about
that but what the user saw was that they
move this slider LED up and a graph
changed based on a database query and
maybe some computations to update so
much more interactive user experience
what we've just announced I'm I'm really
excited about is that web objects is a
platform for the development community
now I've heard a lot since coming over
to Apple from next that hey this web
object stuff is really cool but the
developer community can't afford to buy
$25,000 deployment licenses so you know
we we hope you can do something about
that well we did something about that we
have given you the opportunity within
this yellow box environment to write
standalone web applications to web
enable your desktop applications that
you're building or that other people
build to create brand-new services that
you've end over the internet or to
extend the web objects platform itself
as the folks at tip-top and as the folks
at go live have done and we're targeting
it you specifically by repricing the
basic web objects capability that is in
yellow box to free so you can view all
of this and not pay us any deployment
runtime along with the rest of yellow
box whether you're deploying on Rhapsody
whether you're deploying on Windows NT
or Solaris or hp-ux just go and do it
and we have also announced that we will
be selling the suite of tools that you
need to develop these applications at a
price that's competitive with the sorts
of prices that you're used to paying for
development tools that run on a
Macintosh package so so I think that
we've got a solution there that will
help really enable a whole new class of
integrated web and best
applications within the yellowbox
platform now we're also pushing ahead
with a successful web objects enterprise
product web objects enterprise has this
unlimited scalability that we talked
about it has the ability to access
enterprise data the capability to for
example go after mainframes or Oracle or
Sybase or Informix databases external
ODBC databases that we talked about is
not included in the free deployment
version at that point you come to us and
license that but we have also tiered the
pricing for that to make it easier for
our enterprise customers to get started
with that kind of highly enterprise
enabled capability we've got a new
workgroup price that starts at just
7,500 dollars as well as divisional and
unlimited pricing we also have pricing
for developer tools that's come down
from $5,000 to $14.99 in this space so
we'll make it easier for more people to
get started doing more of these great
web objects applications with that web
objects is completely cross-platform
technology we hope that you're really
getting bored of hearing cross-platform
during this conference we we really want
you to know that we get it and this is
something that is fundamentally
extremely important to us and that we
think is very important to the success
of this as a platform and and in the
sprawl as a company so you can develop
those development tools today run on
Windows NT as well as open step for Mach
and we have announced that we will be
supporting those on Rhapsody within the
yellow box
I'm sure that's that's no surprise
solaris hp-ux our deployment only
platforms they're not systems that we
typically see as often on developers
desktops so they just run the server
portion of the yellow box which allows
web objects deployment to run on top of
them but again just like the rest of it
it's a recompile onto the specific
platform that you want to go to and and
you're moving ahead
what we want to do with web objects as
we move into the future is to continue
to work with standards and market
leaders we don't want to invent
everything at Apple we're good at
inventing stuff but we also really want
to take advantage of all of the things
that the markets doing and the power
that that brings so we're going to try
and be as uh Nera ghen as we can be to
work with standards and market leaders
and partners to continue to flesh out
our whole product offering we will
continue to offer a choice of languages
Java being and extremely important one
of those but also ensure that
development can can be leveraged in the
future for example we have a lot of
customers who with web objects
Enterprise who really want to develop in
Java they wouldn't talk to us wouldn't
buy our product if we didn't have Java
support but they're not ready to deploy
that big mission-critical project that
they've got to do next month in Java or
maybe they've got a train of investment
in other languages we'll by the way that
we bridge the objective-c and in Java
Runtime of we've allowed developers to
subclass all of their objects on on that
side on the objective-c side in Java and
vice versa
bottom line what that means is the
developers who still choose not to
develop in Java yet are going to be able
to take advantage of 100% of the
development that they do when they
decide to move to Java and and and so
that they can develop in continents
knowing that they're going to be able to
have a smooth path to Java we also want
to be able to support a broader market
of developers both in terms of the
pricing as you've seen but also by
making our products easier to use and to
get started with that was something that
was important for our enterprise
customers and we were marching hard on
before this direction now that we also
are part of the yellowbox developer
platform it's that much more important
that we make it as easy as possible for
people to take advantage of all of the
power that's in web objects so that's a
strong development thrust
we want to give customers more to start
with to continue to build where it makes
sense reusable components application
component where that they can just drop
into their applications and get going
with and we're also looking to the
developer community to both in
horizontal and vertical areas build up
components that folks can use and we
want to have support for increasing
flexibility in terms of the deployment
of the application not just with HTML on
the browser not just with desktop
applications not just with individual
applets and components on the browser as
we describe the client-side component
story but also with a true Java
client/server so what we're going to be
doing in 97 and just a little bit into
1998 is to ship web objects 3-1 that
should ship in a couple of weeks again
that's you have a pre-release version of
that in your bag or you will once you
turn that coupon in tomorrow and get the
hot off the presses web objects 3-1
pre-release CDs this summer we're going
to be shipping web objects 3-5 late
quite late summer which will have
enhanced ease of use we've created a
capability are creating a capability
called mentors which are different from
Wizards you know Wizards come and ask
you some questions and then they spew
out some code then they leave and you're
stuck with the mess with that's that's
were the negative way to put it but but
a mentor on the other hand sticks with
an application developer as he or she is
writing an application and working on
the application it's not hit and run
kind of a thing and I'm really looking
forward to showing that off to you in
the near future
Rhapsody support and more pre-built
components to get people started simple
example we found out that almost all of
our developers had login panels and they
had some kind of authentication
management through their applications to
figure out who was using it was it just
a normal user or is that somebody with
some more authority to see some specific
things so why not fold that into the
frame
so so we're doing that in early 1998 we
will deliver webobjects 4.0 which will
have increased direction
I mean increased progress for ease of
use and for additional pre-built
components and platform support and all
the other things that were working on
but also will be making a strong thrust
and a true 100% Java client/server
environment and again I'm very very much
looking forward to being able to tell
you more about that and show that office
very exciting work so we've got a bunch
of paths for learning more about web
objects there are a lot of sessions
today and tomorrow I wanted to tell you
about and sort of help you decide what
might make sense
next in this hall is web objects
frameworks which gives you an overview
to the web objects framework itself that
is the piece that does the dynamic
generation of HTML and the state
management and the parsing so that'll
drill you down into some detail and
what's really inside there and what you
as a developer need to do to take
advantage of it
session 410 using web objects builder
we'll go through some fairly extended
demos of building real applications
using web objects builder so you can get
a sense for what that's like in a very
practical sense data access and web
objects will drill down on the
enterprise objects framework and how it
works with the web objects framework to
allow you to develop database enabled
applications with web objects web
objects client technology speaks to the
Java and the also a new ability that we
have in web objects 3.1 which is the
ability to in partnership with Adobe to
deliver dynamic PDF forms rather than
generating HTML with web objects 3.1 you
can fill in forms dynamically that look
exactly like they will on a printed page
that looked like exactly like what you
want them to so that's that's a new
capability there we'll be showing that
off along with some some really neat
partner solutions by the folks at a is
that leverage our client-side JavaScript
and tricks about how to tune your
application for performance how to plan
for its deployment how to manage 20
application instance processes running
on three multiprocessor machines and so
on all of the things that that really
hit the road when you start deploying
major applications like the Dell site or
like the Disney site session for 14
talks about the places where use the
developer have business opportunities
around web objects and for 17 which is
later tonight brings some folks on stage
who have actually developed with objects
applications and they will share their
experiences with you and in what worked
and and what was hard and and what
they'd like to see and and what they
think about all of this and very
importantly on Thursday morning as a
feedback session where we get to hear
from you after you've seen this stuff
what you think about it and what you
think we need to be doing and we're very
interested in hearing your thoughts so
it's 8:30 which is kind of early I
apologize for that but but I really hope
you can make that so so I'm in marketing
so I got to close you know I got to try
and close for something call to action
so please attend the rebbe objects
tracks that seem to make sense for you
pick up your CD turn in that coupon and
get it apologize that we didn't get it
into the packages but it was it was
worth the wait
trust me check out the omni group
website which has a mailing list for web
objects developers there's a real wealth
of information there hats off to the
folks at Omni for doing that
and and get developing some applications
so that's the end of my session what I'd
like to do is to open the floor up to
questions there are microphones on
either side of the hall so if you could
please go up to them so not only can we
all hear you but you'll be recorded for
posterity
thanks we have about 15 minutes for
questions yes
sorry ask me first I already have a
legacy system that has a 40 database
that I'm using just a CGI's formed
people enter data and it goes on the
database and that's about it but if you
have this list of different databases
that your stuff will work with and they
never say 40 specifically in there is 40
will this work with 40 that's that's a
really good question I mean I think it's
fair to say that from our historical
customer base sort of large enterprises
doing large-scale database access 40 was
not something that popped up very often
so it's not not a high not a high hit
point high pressure point now as part of
Apple obviously they really would like
to work with them so we don't have any
announcements on that score yet we don't
have anything out of the box that works
with 40 unless there's an ODBC driver
for them but but we would like to make
that happen
Katie could you go over the prices again
and specifically upgrades are they the
same tool price or some variant or free
upgrades for like for existing customers
or
okay the most important price is free
that's the what you need to pay us to
deploy an application that you've built
with web objects or other pieces of the
yellow boxes you've heard today we have
not announced pricing on the developer
tools that go along with that but it
will be something that that I believe
you all will think is very reasonable if
you bought tools on a Mac platform
before or on a Windows platform the for
the web objects enterprise product the
beginning level of deployment that we
have starts at $7,500 that's that's for
a single server the tools for any level
of deployment but for any developer
developing a web objects enterprise
product is $14.99 and that includes all
of the enterprise database capability
okay if you're if you're building a web
objects enterprise application for every
developer that's building those
applications we want $1,499 and then to
deploy it when you're actually running
the application and people are using it
the price for that starts at 7,500 yeah
for that server it was Jill Roos
hello since you're on the pricing area
is there going to be an academic
discount like there was with the next
arrangement we have not come to the
finish the details on that but I expect
since we're part of Apple that that's
something along those lines that will
happen but we don't have any specifics
to announce right now we we think that
makes sense can web objects do anything
for me in terms of main brain
connectivity 30 to 70 sessions in
conjunction with one of one of our
development partners if you've got a
mainframe that has no other way you know
client library no you know no Corbeau
wrapper no ODBC driver no I mean it's
the mainframe application you want to
access that is 30 to 70 there's a
product called the legacy objects
framework which is an adapter to the
enterprise objects framework and works
with that a number of our customers have
deployed mainframe enabled applications
with that product and another product
from a company called connections the
first ones from a company called irid
and have had great luck with that
so yes absolutely in conjunction with
the development community another one
one more question was do you have any
plans for providing deployment prospects
on SGI servers no additional platform
support announcements at this time you
differentiate between web objects
enterprise and the base web objects it's
easy for me to understand on the
enterprise side you have the you know
big database connectivity whether it's
oracle sybase ODBC you explain them what
does the basic product give you if you
don't have that connectivity just
differentiate between the two it gives
you that the two differences between the
thing that we include for free in the
platform and the thing that we charge
relatively speaking a lot of money for
the higher value product is the
scalability that is the ability to
distribute your at the load across your
application that only comes with the
enterprise product as well as the
ability to access the enterprise
Moose's but if you have an application
that you've written
that's a desktop application and you
want to vend a sort of pure web service
or you do your own data management or
you do computations or you want to use a
particular set of local databases that
that we hope to include with yellow box
at that point then the base product
works so most of what people do
dynamically on the web the base product
will work for things that are current
enterprise customers are looking for in
terms of large scale and connectivity
this is the enterprise product anything
else okay oh yeah you can be supporting
say taking credit cards electronic
commerce that kind of thing getting
money into it main basically that's
that's a good question what about
support for electronic commerce we have
a number of our customers who have built
commerce sites Disney sharper image our
two that come to mind and there there
are a number of pieces to those so one
piece is how do you actually take the
credit card order make sure that's right
thing interface with an order management
system those pieces we have left to the
third-party market and so companies like
VeriFone and open market and cyber cash
and other players in that space because
of web objects open nature it's been
quite easy for our customers to
integrate with those and take the order
one piece is well what about the
security you know about somebody sending
a credit card over than that is web
objects support SSL the answer is well
not we don't have to get involved in in
that piece of the security because the
browser and the server the web server
already do that and we don't get in the
middle of their conversation so whatever
they do just works what if you're
concerned about security behind the
firewall between the server and the web
object application server well in that
case it's straightforward to add
capability to the adapter that as I said
the source code for and add in the
ability to use Secure Sockets rather
than regular sockets works fine it does
there we go
did that answer the question anything
else what about case studies or anything
like that are they available or would
that be in this session did you describe
for deployment yeah I would definitely
there are a number of if you're
interested in case studies of web
objects at work here at the forum I
would encourage you to to talk or to go
to the soldiers in the web war
presentation that's a good place for
there's some case studies and some of
our own testing analysis for performance
and scalability in the deployment and
performance section and I would also
encourage you to talk with your Apple
enterprise sales rep who can give you
something that's particularly focused to
what you're trying to do you know pretty
good attitude to dates about Gloria and
IO be sure say something is about Corbin
IUP excellent question those business
objects in a web objects application can
talk out to Corbis services and can get
their information or data or can be
filled in by bike or by objects that
reside on another server that can happen
in one of two ways if you happen to
write your business objects in Java then
you don't need anything from us to make
that happen you can use third-party like
vision ixora Java to korva bridges to to
hook that up the other model is that if
you have developed an objective-c we
have in alpha right now but available to
you the ability to do an objective-c IDL
knapping Objective C to korban mapping
so for example BellSouth is deployed in
application
we're in they've written their business
objects in objective-c and they get
populated from from a corpus source and
that application they don't happen to
use the enterprise objects framework
they use this corba hook in because
that's their data is in a corporate
source going the other way out to the
client
typically with web objects people do
HTML based applications but we've had a
few customers who've wanted to have
completely interactive Java applications
as a matter of fact they've built that
themselves with with other tools so the
question is how to hook in the business
objects from web objects that have the
state management and the ability to
interact with HTML and the ability to
get populated from databases how to hook
those up into the java application may
have run in the browser well with the
Netscape IOP plug-in they've been able
to go I IOP on the browser out to the
web objects application server we're
using like again the Visio genex or
they've been able to hook into the
Business Objects of it written in Java
so can go from our application server
out to the client or from our
application server to request services
from another server using korva and an
IO P and that works whether you use Java
or Objective C anything else
probably needed three more microphones
in this room sorry sir you talked about
being able to put wrappers around your
current object be able to ear open stuff
objects you'd be able to use them with
web objects is there any facility like
that for next step objects are you have
to get the open stuff first we've got to
get help and stuff first okay is there
any transition tools available to go
from X step to yellow box yes there are
there are tools to help you get from
from the old we made some changes in the
api's when we establish the open step
standard so folks who developed under
next step use some different conventions
in their applications and when we went
to a portable standard based model when
we did that we also provided some tools
for making that transition and we also
have a white paper on that but I believe
is available on the next comm website I
encourage you to look at that I guess
you say that in early 98 you have 100
percent Java client/server environment
do you mean
RMI by that or is that available now
through one point one um there there
should be no reason why if you've got a
business object that you've written in
Java within the web objects application
server it's just a completely normal
Java object there's no funniness and it
doesn't even subclass you know one of
our objects a normal normal object so
you should be able to use RMI right now
with that I'm not aware of anybody who's
done that only those people have talked
about doing it but I mean I'd be a great
thing to see so if any of you want to
take your just home run running right
away do that and let me know that we
great but no further announcements on
the pure java client and then server
thing right now
great well it looks like we are out of
time and out of questions at the same
time so that worked really well I
appreciate your spending this time with
us encourage you go to the other tracks
and take those CDs and develop great
stuff thanks
[Applause]
[Music]
you