IBM Introduces Web Intermediaries; A Powerful New Class of Web Applications.SAN JOSE San Jose, city, United States San Jose (sănəzā`, săn hōzā`), city (1990 pop. 782,248), seat of Santa Clara co., W central Calif.; founded 1777, inc. 1850. , Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 10, 1999-- Aiming to give Web developers and users more control over the flow and customization of web data, IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) has released a free Java-based software toolkit that enables a powerful new class of applications known as web intermediaries See WBI. . Intermediaries can monitor and modify the flow of web data between clients, servers and proxies. For example, they can produce personalized content, seamlessly connect local and remote information on the web, route web traffic, translate protocols or translate document formats. IBM's Web Intermediary (WBI (WeB Intermediaries) A technology from IBM that provides a framework for intermediate processing between the user's browser and the Web server. WBI provides a middleware standard that can be used for password and privacy management, for transcoding from one format to ) Developer Kit for Java, which can be downloaded free of charge from IBM's alphaWorks web site (http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/wbidk ), provides a flexible but highly functional framework for creating intermediary applications. "As the World Wide Web becomes a more complex arena for e-business and information management, people are tapping into it with many devices, even digital assistants, mobile phones and other pervasive computing Refers to the use of computers in everyday life, including PDAs, smartphones and other mobile devices. It also refers to computers contained in commonplace objects such as cars and appliances and implies that people are unaware of their presence. devices," says Rob Barrett, the IBM Research IBM Research, a division of IBM, is a research and advanced development organization and currently consists of eight locations throughout the world and hundreds of projects. scientist who led the development of Web Intermediary (WBI, pronounced: "webby"). "Moreover, businesses need to manipulate and coordinate information across many different servers. But it's impractical for Web servers to anticipate everyone's specific needs, especially as those needs change over time. Web intermediaries can provide the 'smart pipes' that automatically transform and customize a broad range of Web-based content so everyone can receive the information in the way they need it." For example, IBM, the SABRE Group and Nokia recently announced their intention to build a "transcoding" intermediary based on WBI that selectively reformats SABRE's airline information data into a form suitable for the Nokia smart cellular phone (http://www.ibm.com/java/community/story-sabre.html) WBI is also used in Edmark's KidDesk Internet Safe to enable parents to choose the Web sites their children can access. (http://www.edmark.com/prod/kdis/ ). The WBI Developer Kit contains about 80 percent of the code and all the application program interfaces (APIs) needed to create fully functional Web intermediaries. As a result, intermediaries made using the WBI Development Kit can run anywhere -- on the local client machine, a proxy server or the content server -- and in each place they provide the same programming model. It also includes five example WBI plug-in programs that show some of the myriad web intermediary possibilities: Personal History -- Keeps a history of the user's past browsing, allows users to search this history to find previously viewed pages, creates an "automated hotlist A listing of the best of something. It typically refers to the most popular Web sites. (World-Wide Web) hotlist - (From hypertext "hot spot") A document on the World-Wide Web or a user's browser configuration file containing hypertext links, often unorganised and " of the 200 pages visited most frequently, and adds shortcut (1) In Windows, a shortcut is an icon that points to a program or data file. Shortcuts can be placed on the desktop or stored in other folders, and double clicking a shortcut is the same as double clicking the original file. links to pages based on previous browsing patterns. Traffic Lights -- Assesses the current net speed to links on web pages as they are viewed. Red, yellow or green dots added near the links indicate that the connection speed is slow, medium and fast, respectively. Page Filtering -- Similar to the system used in Edmark's Kid Desk, Page Filtering permits a web browser The program that serves as your front end to the Web on the Internet. In order to view a site, you type its address (URL) into the browser's Location field; for example, www.computerlanguage.com, and the home page of that site is downloaded to you. to display only the pages of specific sites. Yahoo Category Tracker -- Retains a list of all the Yahoo category pages that are visited, permitting a rapid return to those pages without remembering the initial path. XML/XSL -- Transcoding intermediaries convert data from one format to another, which is especially useful when the file/data format coming from the Web server is not supported by the browser of, say, a personal digital assistant. This program uses the XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language) A standard from the W3C for describing a style sheet for XML documents. It is the XML counterpart to the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in HTML and is compatible with CSS2. (eXtensible Stylesheet Language (World-Wide Web) Extensible Stylesheet Language - (XSL) A standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium defining a language for transforming and formatting XML documents. ) to convert XML XML in full Extensible Markup Language. Markup language developed to be a simplified and more structural version of SGML. It incorporates features of HTML (e.g., hypertext linking), but is designed to overcome some of HTML's limitations. (eXtensible Markup Language See XML. (language, text) Extensible Markup Language - (XML) An initiative from the W3C defining an "extremely simple" dialect of SGML suitable for use on the World-Wide Web. http://w3.org/XML/. ) data into HTML, which can be displayed using a web browser. The alphaWorks license allows developers to download the WBI technology for personal use and to create their own WBI plug-ins for performing specific tasks. Developers are encouraged to give feedback to IBM's Research team to help improve future generations of the technology. A commercial version of WBI is available for developers building web intermediary products. WBI was developed at IBM Research's Almaden Research Center The IBM Almaden Research Center, located near San Jose, California, is one of IBM's largest research centers, specializing in both basic research in material science and applied research in computer storage, where many refinements and improvements were made in hard disc drive in San Jose, Calif., in cooperation with IBM's Network Computing Software Division in Research Triangle Park Research Triangle Park, research, business, medical, and educational complex situated in central North Carolina. It has an area of 6,900 acres (2,795 hectares) and is 8 × 2 mi (13 × 3 km) in size. Named for the triangle formed by Duke Univ. , N. Car. IBM released the WBI Developer Kit to encourage a wide range of Web developers to work together to evolve the application program interface (API) for intermediaries. Technical details: At its core, WBI is a programmable HTTP proxy server. IBM's Web Intermediary Developer Kit provides 1) a new programmable control point for building web applications; 2) a set of developer resources for building applications, and 3) a run-time environment for deploying these applications. In particular, it includes all the application programming interfaces (APIs) and documentation to allow developers to start writing intermediary-based applications as well as the code needed to manage functions common for many intermediaries, such as: network connections, sessions, HTTP and HTML. To develop a WBI application, developers only need to devise the Java code required for their specific function to plug into the WBI framework. WBI runs on any system for which Sun's Java2 SDK (Software Developer's Kit) See developer's toolkit and Windows SDK. SDK - Software Developers Kit (or "Software Development Kit"). is available. It also runs on older versions of Java, including JDKs 1.1.5 and 1.1.6 and has been tested under Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT4, and Linux. More detailed information on WBI's architecture and example applications is available at the project home page: (http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/wbi ) About alphaWorks: alphaWorks' mission is to provide early adopter developers direct access to IBM's emerging "alpha-code" technologies. alphaWorks is dedicated to surfacing the latest software technologies for download and evaluation through its Web site: http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com . alphaWorks is redefining the way IBM conducts new product development by involving developers in the earliest stages, before integration into products, or becoming licensing opportunities. Innovative developers and technology decision-makers work directly with IBM's researchers and developers through discussion forums, and influence the earliest phases of IBM's new product development. About IBM: IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. The fastest way to get more information about IBM is through the IBM home page at http://www.ibm.com |
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