First Look

TIBCO today rolled out General Interface version 3.2 beta release, which features open source licensing, support for Firefox 1.5 -- and a very interesting ability to combine AJAX Rich Internet Applications into SOAs.

TIBCO's director of product marketing -- and noted AJAX pioneer -- Kevin Hakman cited Google Maps' integration with home sale listings from Craigslist as one example of an RIA that could point the way towards easier SOAs.

"That information is assembled and presented at the point of the browser, and you are no longer generating HTML pages, but you are actually generating true software through a browser," he noted.

"It adds the ability to create RIAs with AJAX that run on the browser that deliver the best of both worlds - the ease of deployment of Web pages but all the richness and functionality of desktop clients, Hakman said.

This will allow companies to "take existing and new systems and expose them in ways that individual business services can be reused," Hakman said. "The key tenet is that you expose it once and it can be used by any number of client or server systems."

"This concept of service orientation works at a very simple level that people can get started with today, then move through a mid-scale and enterprise-scale distribution with the added provision of products like enterprise service buses," he added.

For much more on the topic, listen to the entire eight-minute podcast.