Art Technology Group Inc claims the race is over to release the first application development environment written in Java, with its announcement of Dynamo 2. Coming five months after the first iteration, the Boston, Massachusetts company has re-engineered the inaugural Dynamo for Java standards, having written the thing in the language itself (CI No 2,822). Four and a half year-old Art is made up mainly of Media Lab and other Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduates and has been internally funded thus far. The development environment includes Dynamo Engine, which ties together an object-oriented database, server-side objects, an application framework and the programming environment. It is compatible with all major HyperText Transfer Protocol servers, supporting the Netscape Communications Corp NSAPI standard and the Common Gateway Interface. Support for Microsoft Corp’s ISAPI is scheduled for this month. The SQLgate internal object database is merely an interim offering, admitted chief technology officer Joe Chung. It has an Object DataBase Connectivity gateway to be replaced eventually by a Java DataBase Connectivity gateway, he predicted. Art is also planning support for the Versant Object Technology Corp object database. Dynamo Gears are a set of re-usable components that have not changed since the first release. They include things like Session Tracking, Web-O-Grams and Activity Monitor. This month, Discussion Thread and Dynamic Advertisement gears have been added. Art has written an electronic commerce application for Stream International Inc, which provides technical support for Microsoft products and IBM Corp’s Lotus Notes, among others. The Art stuff is an Internet site for sale, distribution and support of products. In Japan, NTT Data Communication Systems Corp is using Art to put up an entertainment site to meet the current Japanese need to prove they are something on the Internet. It will be up by mid-July, said Chung. Art is selling Dynamo direct at the moment, but actively seeks marketing and distribution agreements. Available now for SunSoft Inc’s Solaris 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, Windows NT 3.51 and Irix 5.3, it is $5,000 per license which includes everything mentioned plus one year’s support.
