Ton Blankers

Why don’t my Enterprise Applications look like Facebook?

Client Manager UnifaceTwitter:@tonblankers

Why this question?

Are we finished with 3GL for application development?

What are the alternatives?

Systems

Operating Systems

System utilities

Device drivers

Embedded controllers

Development

Programming languages

Development platforms

Databases

Development tools

Application servers

Applications

Business capabilities

Web

Mobile

Games

Productivity task tools

Embedded applications

Business Software: What is it?

Companies develop applications to support all the activities of their customers

Business capabilities

apps

Business process

Content & Collaboration

Task productivity

apps

Process control

Web apps

eCommerce

Customer service

Content, media, & games

Marketing

Mobile apps

eCommerce

Customer service

Content, media, & games

Location-based

Marketing

Java (and .NET) still very popular. . . especially for medium and large companies.

Everyone surprised: Technology suppliers, companies, developers

150 Euro/hour HTML Developers: “Yee ha.” cgi-bin: “Huh.” Stock market: “Until the bubble burst”

Sun Microsystems came with Java as the Web development platform

Most vendors stood and watched Java become the de facto standard for Internet/Web application development for businesses Together with supporting technology such as HTML and JavaScript

Followed by alternatives from Adobe ColdFusion, Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP), among others

The web had a huge impact on application development

Write once, run anywhereSimple, object-oriented, C/C++ like notation Interpreted, threaded, and dynamic

Robust and secure No pointers, automated garbage collection

Architecture-neutral and portable Byte code on virtual machine

High performance (later) Native code complier

Java is more than a languageClass libraries

J2EE

Frameworks JBoss Hibernate SpringSource

JSRs Servlets, JSP, etc.

Dev tools Netbeans Eclipse

Runtime containers (app servers)

New Languages Groovy/Grails, JRuby, Scala

Java works perfectly!

And why not?

Is popularity the most important reason to choose for a technology for the future?

Past results don’t offer a guarantee for the

future.

The end-users chose the requirements for the applications, not the technology!

The end-users chose the requirements for the applications, not the technology!

“We can’t keep up with the changes.”

“How de we maintain our web application?”

“The business doesn’t know what it wants.”

“The users keep changing their requirements.”

“Does the architecture support the users’ requirements?”

“Since we’ve gone Agile it’s getting better and going faster, but not good enough.”

“We have to improve the user experience.”

“The only certainty is change.”Two important megatrends

determine the future

• The business application needs to change quickly enough to keep up with the end-user expectations.

Rapid Change

• The costs of changes and maintenance must be covered.

Cost Effective

Adaptability

Megatrend 1: Rapid Change

• Users need to achieve their goalsFunctions

• Users can easily work on their tasks.Usable

• Users like to work with the application.Desired

Megatrend 2: Excellent User

Experience

Business applications need to be in balance with users’ criteria

Criterium What does this mean

1 ExperienceUsers’ perceptions of the usefulness, usability, and desirability of the application

2 AvailabilityThe readiness of an application to perform its functions when needed

3 PerformanceThe speed with which an application performs a function to meet business and user expectations

4 ScalabilityHandle increasing or decreasing volumes of transactions, services, and data

5 AdaptabilityThe ease with which an application can be changed or extended

6 SecuritySupports the security properties of confidentiality, integrity, authentication, authorization, and nonrepudiation

7 EconomyMinimize the cost to build, operate, and change an application without comprising its business value

Old way of working being discussed

• 32% were successful• 44% had serious problems• 24% stopped/failed

Standish Group CHAOS

Summary 2009 report

2/3 of all projects are not good!

Java is perhaps not the best choice when considering the trends

1. Java was not designed for enterprise applications

2. Java innovation is not enough to fulfill modern user requirements

3. Java’s strong points for developers do not equal good user interface or reduce the maintenance costs

4. There are many alternatives

New languages are needed to fill productivity gap with the language itself!

“Plumbing” frameworks are popular

Source: January 21, 2011, “The Future Of Java” Forrester Report

Customer quotes:

“Uniface is fast and a lot faster than J2EE or even .NET development environments”

“A distributed imaging component took at least 10 times longer to write and get working within the .NET environment than it did to develop within the Uniface component”

Rapid application development

Productivity study: Java, .NET, UnifaceBased on PetStore Application

• New languages and technologies: Javascript, XML, CSS and HTML

• New State management: Stateless vs. Stateful

• New data connectivity: Disconnected data vs. connected datasets

• Browser independent

• What happens with existing client/server applications

Web application challengesWhat about productivity??

Learn More:

Productivity White paper (hyperlink)

3 Minute Video about Uniface (hyperlink)

Uniface Productivity