Curl, Inc., the developer of the Curl Rich Internet Application (RIA) Platform, has announced the release of Curl Data Kit Data Services (CDK-DS). CDK-DS is ideal for enterprise developers who are building new applications that require a fast, scalable and reliable data connection to existing server infrastructure, according to the vendor. This includes those developers using Adobe Flex or Flash who have discovered that they need a more robust client side technology, as well as developers who are upgrading an existing Curl application and require a more powerful and scalable data connectivity solution.
This addition to the Curl Platform is an implementation of the Adobe Action Message Format (AMF) protocol, a binary protocol for communicating and exchanging data between a RIA client and server platforms. Quickly becoming the binary application network protocol of choice for the enterprise, AMF is supported by the open source BlazeDS platform, Adobe LiveCycle Data Services, and soon the Zend PHP platform.
Enterprise-class RIAs are consumers of large amounts of data services, and since data transfer time typically is a significant bottleneck with these data-centric rich client applications, the availability of a compact data transfer format such as AMF is an important enabler for them. The CDK-DS extends these capabilities to the Curl community and offers Adobe Flex and Flash developers an alternative solution to their enterprise RIA challenges.
Richard Treadway, vice president of marketing and product strategy at Curl, tells 5 Minute Briefing that "CDK-DS is a key enabling technology for moving legacy client-server applications to the web. It provides much faster application performance for end-users who are transferring large data sets to their web clients for analysis and reporting."
This initial release of the CDK-DS implements all of the remoting and web messaging services that are supported by the open source BlazeDS server, including publish/subscribe, server push, remote procedure calls (RPC), and security and authorization features. Additionally, all communication with the server is asynchronous, an important option for usability, as it keeps the user interface active even while waiting for a response from the server. For more information about Curl, go here.