Curl taps Adobe RIA infrastructure

The perils of open source

By Gavin Clarke in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Developer, 6th January 2009 20:34 GMT

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One of the side effects of Adobe Systems releasing code under open-source, the company said last year, has been to let competitors into its Rich Internet Applications (RIA) back yard.

One such competitor is Curl, which has announced its latest piece of Adobe-inspired work, something intended to gently cut the umbilical cord between developers and Flex and Flash, while still employing some robust, underlying Adobe infrastructure engineering.

The technology in question is Curl Data Kit Data Services (CDK-DS), which has been built using Adobe's BalazeDS Server and an implementation of Adobe's Action Message Format (AMF) protocol.

BlazeDS is a Java remoting and web messaging technology to "easily" connect clients securely to distributed servers and data services. AMF is used to exchange data between the client and server. Adobe announced it planned to open-source and released code for BlazeDS and AMF in December 2007.

In a nod to Adobe, Curl said CDK-DS is for "everyone" - singling out Adobe Flex and Flash developers - who want a "fast, scalable and reliable data connection to existing server infrastructure" but also "need a more robust client side technology."

Curl, originally an MIT language spin out that's currently riding the RIA bus, boasts a number of big-name manufacturing and IT companies in Japan. It claims its Curl language and platform offers a more business-critical and web-based offering than is possible using AJAX or Adobe.

CDK-DS is also targeted at existing Curl users that need to upgrade, the company said.

Curl said CDK-DS implements services supported by BlazeDS, including publish and subscribe, server push, remote procedure calls (RPC), and security and authorization features. ®

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