Tibco Goes Open Source

October 4th, 2006: As of Monday this week, Tibco software has begun offering its General Interface Rich Internet Application (RIA) toolkit as open source.

Based on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), version 3.2 of the toolkit has included an open source licensing option and support for FireFox 1.5 in an attempt to drive AJAX adoption and extend the benefits of service-oriented architecture (SOA) to users and developers.

“What PowerBuilder did to accelerate the use of relational data base systems in the 1980's, TIBCO aims to do for SOA, through General Interface and its SOA products,” says Kevin Hakman, director, product marketing, TIBCO General Interface. “Offering TIBCO General Interface under an open source license broadens the availability of our proven enterprise-class AJAX RIA libraries and visual tools to an even larger group of developers and organizations.”

The company says that the value of service-oriented IT systems can be greatly enhanced by implementing AJAX RIAs at the presentation tier because:

• Customers already transitioning to SOA can use the General Interface to connect end users directly to reusable data services and business processes through interfaces accessed instantly through the a standard web browser
• Customers just beginning to leverage services oriented concepts will find that the General Interface works with simple services already in place

“Bringing RIA and SOA together makes sense at a programmatic level as they share the same underlying principles. Specifically, the asynchronous model in AJAX is very similar to the ESB [Enterprise Service Bus] model,” says Mark Driver, vice president and research director, Gartner, Inc. “By connecting RIA on the front end to services on the back end, it brings the possibility of service reuse into a vendor-neutral client tier and the potential to deliver significantly more powerful client applications to the browser.”

Tibco says its General Interface version 3.2 beta edition will provide developers with more than 100 ready-made components, data management and communication tools, making it one of the most comprehensive and mature AJAX offerings on the market today.

General Interface version 3.2 is available to the public now as a beta download, with source code to be released after the beta cycle has been completed.

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