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The world of applications today and tomorrow

At the 9th GXalliance Meeting, Nicolás Jodal, vice president of ARTech, presented the key issues ARTech is currently observing and working on.

The presentation by Nicolás Jodal focused on the "GeneXus radar" metaphor, a radar to watch the development of key issues for the GeneXus community.

"GeneXus radar" is used to construct the future rather than to predict it, explained Nicolás Jodal, vice-president of ARTech. Through this "radar" we watch what is going on in the industry, we discuss news from the world of Java and .NET, the world of applications and of GeneXus, he explained.

Jodal commented that Java and .NET platforms continue to grow in the industry, displacing former platforms. When talking about the world of Open Source, he highlighted the growth of MySQL, the support of which is being launched in the new GeneXus version.

He also talked about new developments expected in user interface, in particular the new Microsoft user interface Avalon, and the ideas of Googles user interface Ajax.

He commented on the appearance of Google as an interesting player in the industry, that uses innovative architecture based on thousands of low quality servers, launched the idea of Ajax and that has started to show successful Web client applications such as Google Desktop Search.

He also pointed out, as another new element in the industry, that the model of software as service is starting to work, and mentioned examples outside the GeneXus community, such as Sailforce.com and Netsuite.com, and within the GeneXus community, the ERP Lisa from the Chilean company Browse, and the Human Resources application MAP, of MSB Argentina, that are already operating under this sales mechanism.

Finally, he pointed out that the industry is only just now starting to envision the model already defined by GeneXus: declaring instead of programming. This is in the minds of the supporters of Model Driven Architecture (OMG) and of those who support Domain Specific Languages (Microsoft), and it is a good thing for GeneXus.

In a general comment on the future of applications, Jodal reviewed issues that have been in the "radar" for some time now: multi-platform applications, multi-devices and Web. He said that the GeneXus community is delivering this type of applications, and mentioned several GeneXus applications with these characteristics that are now in production in Java and .NET. Many of the most important GeneXus software houses have some of their applications on Web. He also mentioned the interest of the GeneXus community for the .NET Mobile generator and multi-devices applications.

However, he proposed three new concepts to be added to the "GeneXus radar" multi-metaphor, customization and integration.

He explained that nowadays applications need to be multi-metaphor, providing multiple views according to user functions. For example, for the user who performs a task, the right metaphor is the Inbox of Workflow, for someone who needs to navigate for information, such as an account executive, the proper metaphor is "work with", while a director wanting to explore information finds the exploration metaphor in GXquery and GXplorer.
Jodal pointed out that customization will add value to future applications by permitting to set parameters by country and by process. Although GeneXus applications do this already, Jodal wants GeneXus to provide further facility in this area, and proposed as the best solution the use of declarative rules defined at setup time.
Concerning the integration and use of Web Services, he said that while there is a growing number of Web Services applications in the world of GeneXus, a lot remains to be done.

To summarize, Jodal stated that ARTechs research area is interested in solving the customization problem aiming at runtime rule definition; in deepening Web type user interface, in the integration of tools surrounding GeneXus (own or third partys), and in the improvement of offline-online communication between applications that operate connected.

"We want all this in order to build applications with GeneXus that would be impossible to do manually so that our customers can have increasing importance in the software industry in the world market", concluded Jodal.

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