Overview

Aspire is a FREEly available RAD tool that use standard XML/XSL, J2EE, and relational database technolgies to quickly develop web sites that can query relational databases and also update relational databases. Aspire accepts the following data sources: Stored procedures,SQL statements, EJBs, and Java objects. Irrespective of the data source choosen, the retrieved data is converted to a conceptual XML stream and passed on to an XSL transform or a JSP transform to convert it to html.

Aspire uses xerces/xalan from Apache in these conversions. Aspire provides database updates either via built-in inprocess java objects that would call stored procedures on your behalf or via EJBs. In all cases the developer does not have to right a single line of middle ware code. For example, once a stored procedure is defined, place it in a properties file and link to a URL, a proper XML data stream is handed over to the XSL transfom. The data abstraction is powerful enough to integrate multiple stored procedures and sql statements into a single XML stream and handed over to the display page. Aspire's integration of the web development pipeline, databases to html and html to the databases is very comprehensive and extensible.

Aspire has been used with non-java programmers quite effectively to develop very complex supply-chain web sites. This has become possible because Aspire allows template based transformation and stored procedure based business logic while using XML/XSL as transport. Works with any servlet engine such as Apache/JServ, Apache/Tomcat, WebSphere. This product is currently free and available for downloads at www.activeintellect.com/aspire. A freely supported mailing list is available for developers. ai-aspire@egroups.com. A couple of issues with EJBs are currently being worked on. Interfacing with Crystal reports and Oracle reports is being currently developed as well. The Product aims to provide the ease of use of template based commercial products and data separation of XML/XSL based products and the power user paradigm of JSP-Taglibs/EJBs at the same time.

Typical Applications: data driven interactive IT applications & B2B

Availability: Runs on any servlet/JSP(or J2EE) platform. Rapid devp by fusing together many of the J2EE apis along with xml/xsl. Transparent/declarative data access to rdbms & EJBs with JSP/XSL as transformations to XML or HTML.

More Information: http://www.activeintellect.com/aspire
Email:

This information has been provided by the vendor and has not been evaluated by O'Reilly's editorial staff.