Corel Corp is reviving some of the work from its ill-fated Corel Office for Java project, which it failed to bring to market last year (CI No 3,229, 3,279). But this time it’s offering some of the core technology as a foundation for others to build applications, rather than pitching too far into the applications business itself. Corel – which yesterday announced huge losses (see Finance section) for its first quarter – launched Open-J at the JavaOne Conference this week, pitching it as a technology on top of which users could build applications for intranet, extranet and internet sites. Corel has channeled the efforts of its Office for Java programming team into developing the new technology, code-named Alta, and the related thin-client jBridge technology, code-named Remagen. Open-J uses a combination of the XML markup language and Sun Microsystems Inc’s Java Beans for the creation of web-based applications, and marks Corel’s attempt to become a technology rather than an applications company. It says it’s the first to use XML as an applications description markup language, using it to glue JavaBeans together to create customized applications. It can be used with any XML editor, word processor or text editor, and developers don’t need Java experience. Corel hopes to sell the technology to third party JavaBeans and class library developers, providing them with a new distribution mechanism and wider market opportunity. Corel will also be writing some applications itself in order to prove the concept, and plans to launch the jSuite set of lightweight business applications, due out during the second half of this year. So that the Java software can access existing applications, the jBridge product has been developed to enable Windows applications to be run on any thin client with an installed Java Virtual Machine. The whole thing takes Corel dangerously close to the same point it should have been at last August – but this time the company is more cautious, and says it hopes to find some big partners to help it push the technology. JavaBeans creator Sun Microsystems would be its ideal partner. Sun was on hand to declare itself delighted with the announcement, but there was no news of any closer relationship. Corel, of course, still develops and sells the WordPerfect, CorelDraw and Ventura applications.
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