Now that we’ve finally released V1.0, I’ve been thinking a bit more about how frevvo fits in with the corporate IT world. I came across this article on my friend Jérôme Louvel’s blog and it led me to these posts by Nick Gall and Dion Hinchcliffe.
Dion draws a nice picture that packages REST, POX (Plain Old XML), HTTP and JSON into an SOA core – the WOA (Web Oriented Architecture). This is cool – I’ve always been a proponent of REST (thanks to Jérôme and his very cool Restlet project) and, IMO, it’s absolutely the way to go for the vast majority of applications (with the exception maybe of a few applications in the very large enterprise that require two-phase commit etc).
But, how does one actually use the WOA? Let’s say you have your WOA. Now, imagine that you can basically replicate the mashup phenomenon within your company – people mashing up these great REST services delivered by your WOA into ad-hoc applications suitable for their needs.
That’s where frevvo steps in. Suddenly, it’s really easy to create a Web 2.0, Ajax-based RIA (Rich Internet Application) that wires up the services in your WOA and to do so at lightning speed and very low cost. frevvo is perfectly complementary to WOA: it uses nothing but HTTP, POX and JSON. frevvo forms can send/display XML data over HTTP to/from your REST services. Got a schema for your XML? frevvo can create the entire form for you automatically. Want business rules, fancy layouts, a rich user experience? We’ve got you covered.
To be truly useful and to actually provide a ROI, even the mightiest WOA in the world must be paired up with a user interface. An Ajax client clearly provides for the best user experience.
I know it’s not as profound as: E = mc2, but dare I say frevvo + WOA = RIA?
