CA Plex Users to Get New Web Deployment Tool

October 2, 2007 Alex Woodie

Companies that use the CA Plex development environment from CA will soon be presented with a new option for Web-enabling their applications. In December, two companies heavily involved in the CA Plex and CA 2E communities, ADC Austin and Websydian, plan to ship Websydian Web Developer+.

According to the companies, the new development tool will enable CA Plex customers to deploy their existing Plex applications to the Web without any additional development work. By tapping into the control panel layout specified in the Plex panel designer, and through a set of HTML templates and advanced patterns, Websydian Web Developer+ will enable the creation of HTML screens that are similar in look and function to their client-server counterparts.

The development tool will work hand in hand with the Websydian Development Suite, the Danish company’s flagship programmer’s toolkit, as well as the Websydian Server, the runtime environment for the “distributed Websydian architecture.” By using the underlying development framework with Websydian Web Developer+, security and scalability are already built into the product, Websydian says.

The new product allows Plex customers to further spruce up their applications using JavaScript and Web services, such as mapping software, the companies say. The runtime environment also requires a J2EE application server, such as IBM WebSphere or Apache Tomcat.

Another advantage of using the new Web deployment tool is built-in support for Plex applications that have been migrated from CA 2E (formerly AllFusion 2E, Advantage 2E, and a host of other names) using ADC Modernization Studio, the Austin, Texas, company’s 2E-to-Plex migration tool.

ADC Austin was happy to work with Websydian on Websydian Web Developer+, says John Rhodes, president of the company and its principal architect. “2E shops that are targeting SOA [service oriented architecture] strategies with IBM WebSphere or Tomcat can especially benefit from this technology,” he says.

The Plex community has been demanding a Web client for Plex for years, according to Mikkel Schnack, sales and channels director for Websydian. “So when ADC approached us with an idea to join forces, we saw this as an opportunity to meet this demand and enable Plex shops to make their applications accessible from the Web,” he says.