Inline Software Corp popped up from left field yesterday with an Enterprise Java Beans code generator which prompted one of its partners, Symantec Corp to gushingly describe it as the Holy Grail of component assembly. The Sterling, Virginia-based mid-1997 start-up has broken cover with what it claims is the first EJB generator of its kind, and even though it feels like we’ve had a dozen or more companies through these offices peddling similar kinds of claims, none of them has stood up to be counted as a dedicated EJB business process engine. Inline, with 20 employees, reckons it’ll cut custom EJB coding by as much as 85% through use of some pre-defined models for order management, customer orders and others. It does not require a proprietary run-time engine and will support the use of other EJB models, requiring just an application server with the twelve enterprise Java APIs (including EJB) to run. It’ll partner with as many application server Tom, Dick and Harrys as it can. Meantime Symantec, WebLogic Inc and Persistence Software Inc have already said they’ll incorporate Inline’s engine. Inline’s Assembly suite consists of the core AppStation Java business rules and processes generator. TaskStation provides a task flow model to link user interfaces to back-end processing using Java classes. WebStation provides the same functionality for browser environments. It uses XML to capture business information and will also use the embryonic XML Metadata Interchange (XMI), which is the OMG project designed to let developers of distributed systems share object models over the internet. Developers currently use one or other of the proprietary tools from Rational Software Corp, Select Software Tools Inc, Platinum Technology Inc and their ilk. By contrast, XMI works with three existing standards to create a non-vendor-specific file interchange format. These standards are XML, the Unified Modeling Language (UML) for describing business problems and the Meta Object Facility (MOF), which lets developers manage models described in UML. Inline, one of the contributors to the XMI work spearheaded by IBM and Unisys (CI No 3,442), will provide both graphical and non-graphical modeling environments and has partnered with an as-yet undisclosed popular modeling tool company which will support its XMI capability. Assembly will be in alpha and beta releases through the end of this year, expected to be available by the end of the first quarter of 1999. It’s had a small round of initial venture funding from New York’s Brushfire and is about to land $5m in a second round. CTO Jack Greenfield hails from NeXT Computer and ex-Software AG exec CEO Tony Crescenzo was also founder of Analysis Frameworks Inc.
