DBMS, May 1996
I'm finding that the Web finally provides me with most of the business information I need, including product information, emerging technologies, and industry news. Many corporations understand this as well, and are now focusing on the Internet as a legitimate corporate resource.
There is a concurrent but less publicized rise of internal Web sites, servers, and applications that exist behind the corporate firewalls. (See Figure 1, page 26.) These private Web sites are known as "Intranets," and they could be the largest growth area for client/server application development over the next few years. Intranets may also cause a major shift in client/server architectures, paradigms, and tool sets.
This month, let's examine the concept of an Intranet. I'll tell you about the advantages of using an Intranet as a new client/server platform. I'll also discuss potential applications, security issues, and how a new line of Internet/Intranet-aware client/server development tools will drive Intranets' success this year.
Corporate America is just beginning to understand the potential of Intranets. The Intranet concept is driven by organizations that want to exploit inexpensive Web technology (Web browsers and Web servers) for in-house applications. Initially, internal Web use focuses on corporate information dissemination applications such as online documents, company newsletters, or near-time financial information. By leveraging the application development capabilities of the new Internet tools and technology such as Sun's Java, Netscape's plug-in mechanism, and Microsoft's Sweeper (an upcoming Win32-based API standard for Internet/Intranet development), an Intranet also means a new dynamic client/server application development platform for corporate applications.
A new study from Zona Research Inc. (Redwood City, Calif.) states that the largest opportunity for Internet technologies does not lie in supporting commercial applications over the Internet, but rather in the utilization of Internet technologies within the enterprise. Zona contends that organizations are better able to quantify the benefits associated with the use of Intranet technologies for internal communications and applications. IDC, an Arlington, Virginia-based Internet research organization, estimates that in five years the demand for enterprise applications of Web technology will be five times greater than the demand for external applications.
The Intranet offers many advantages over traditional client/server application development platforms including truly open standards, ease of use, simplicity, and lower costs. Web technology uses open standards such as TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML, CGI, and Java, and thus does not lock organizations into proprietary technology with limitations and significant costs. (I classify Java as open in that it's being freely and cheaply licensed to any vendor that wants it.) Heterogeneous database connectivity is available as well using open API standards such as ODBC.
The use of point-and-click hyperlinking technology allows users to navigate and locate information easily using standard Web browsers. With the advent of Java and OCX-based Internet application development tools, users can download and run dynamic applications (or applets) directly from Web browsers without having to maintain a server connection. Using Web browsers such as the popular Netscape Navigator, a single front end provides access to all internal and external resources. Therefore, users don't need to learn multiple software interfaces, all with a different look and feel, and quickly become proficient with Web pages or Web applications. In other words, we're bringing applications together using the browser as a single point of integration.
Web applications are significantly less expensive in either internal or external flavors. The software and hardware required to get Web servers and clients up and running are cheap, Web applications driven from a single browser require less training, and deployment costs are reduced due to the single interface, protocol, and middleware architecture. Large organizations report costs of less than $40 per user to create an Intranet infrastructure, compared to approximately $2000 per user for traditional two-tier client/server application infrastructure (from my own personal experience).
An Intranet brings architectural simplicity back to the enterprise. Let's face it folks, the hodgepodge of proprietary client/server development tools, interfaces, platforms, middleware layers, and network protocols, as well as a shortage of standards, have made client/server one of the most complex and frustrating platforms for building and deploying applications.
Through an Intranet, users can access a wide assortment of applications using a least-common-denominator approach: Web browsers. When a new corporate application is available, the corporate user simply links to the appropriate Web server and runs the new application, either by downloading and executing a Java applet or by receiving an HTML stream from the server or server-based application layers.
An Intranet is portable as well. Popular Web browsers such as Netscape and Mosaic are multiplatform, and almost all computer platforms offer some sort of Web browser required to run Intranet applications, as long as the browsers support the same features (HTML level, Java, and so on). Therefore, Intranet applications run on Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows NT, most Unix flavors, and Macintosh.
An Intranet is already a part of many corporate infrastructures. For example, more than 15,000 Xerox employees have been given immediate access to a new internal Web site called "The Xerox WebBoard," with plans to increase the number of users to 60,000 by year-end. The WebBoard contains postings of daily company and market news, as well as a company folklore area, phone directory, and links to other internal and external sites of interest.
Many organizations go beyond the information dissemination capabilities of an Intranet to extend corporate applications out to Intranet users. General Electric (GE), for example, is creating its own Intranet application called Trading Process Network (TPN). Using TPN, qualified subcontractors can search for GE purchase tenders, receive information, and submit commercial bids via a secure link to GE's Intranet Web servers. TPN is composed of an Oracle7.2 database server working with a Netscape Communications commerce server and custom software developed by GE.
Booz, Allen & Hamilton uses Oracle's PowerBrowser in conjunction with Knowledge Online 2.0 to provide a billing, time, expense, and staffing application to Intranet users. The application links to an internal Oracle7 database server for information storage and retrieval. PowerBrowser is a Power Object look-alike with Web browsing capabilities as well as the ability to run Java applets and Visual Basic-like programming scripting for application development (I discuss this in more detail later). (See Figure 2.) PowerBrowser is one of a few tools, including Netscape 2.0 and Microsoft Explorer, that is ready to run dynamic Web-based applications as well as "surf the Net."
Legacy applications now look toward Intranet infrastructures to provide wrappering services for easy application deployment to clients running Web browsers. For example, SAP/R3, a popular client/server and mainframe-based financial system, is working with Intranet vendors and products such as NeXT Software's WebObjects to provide a mechanism to distribute SAP/R3 application services through an Intranet. This will enable anyone running a browser (inside the firewall and with permission) to link to the local SAP/R3 application server. WebObjects translates the application's interface into HTML that's sent to the browsers, and converts the user's response back into a format that the application can understand.
Although an Intranet offers many benefits, including scalability, cost, ease of use, and platform portability, there are those who balk at this new architecture because of perceived security risks. Let me set everyone straight on this. When using the Intranet, Internet security is not an issue because all of the interaction with corporate Intranet applications takes place behind the safety of a corporate network firewall. If you don't have a firewall between your corporate servers and the Internet, get one now.
Firewalls allow companies to connect their system to the Internet or other public networks, and regulate which information is allowed outside the firewall. If firewalls are not secure enough, corporations can simply disconnect themselves from the Internet. The internal Intranet applications will still function, but users can't link to external Web servers. However, firewalls, for all practical purposes, keep the bad people away from your Intranet resources and still allow users to access the vast resources of the Web.
If you do have to extend your Intranet to others connected to the Internet, such as a remote sales office or mobile user, there are ways to secure those links as well. Through the use of a Virtual Private Network (VPN), organizations can securely "tunnel" across the Internet using encryption to keep prying eyes away from proprietary data. RSA Data Security is currently working with firewall vendors to develop VPN standards.
The next question is: How do you build Intranet applications? Answer: Use the same or similar tools you use to build client/server applications. In many respects the Internet/Intranet application development tool market is similar to the client/server market of just a few years ago. Tool vendors are now scrambling to find their niche on this new "platform," and they all offer their own approach to Internet/Intranet application development.
Today, most client/server vendors including Borland, Microsoft, Oracle, Powersoft, Neuron Data, and a few others either offer or plan to offer Internet/Intranet-enabled versions of their products. There are plenty of new tools and architectures as well, including NeXT Software's WebObjects and the OLE-enabled OpenScape from Business@Web. Let's take a quick look at how a few of the more popular tools take us to the Intranet.
It's clear that Borland aligned itself with Java to provide Intranet development, and plans to reengineer its products around Java as well. For instance, Borland C++ 5.0 includes new Java development tools with a just-in-time compiler, a graphical Java applet debugger, and an integrated version of Sun's Java Development Kit (JDK). In addition, Borland's new AppAccelerator is a just-in-time compiler with significant performance advantages for Java developers.
Borland will even Internet/Intranet-enable dBASE. Version 5.5 of dBASE allows dBASE developers to create interactive Intranet applications that present information from local DBF files in HTML format.
The current excitement at Borland surrounds Latte, the code name for Borland's visual development environment for building Java applications. Borland developers will see Latte first as an add-on product for Borland C++. However, the real power of Latte is found in the Delphi-like visual development environment that Borland plans to release later this year. Based on the quick success of Delphi, I'd say that Latte is the one to watch.
Powersoft's PowerBuilder 5.0 will provide developers with the ability to create OLE servers and browser plug-ins for Internet/Intranet application development. Powersoft will make a PowerBuilder DataWindow available as an OCX plug-in. This will allow developers to add data access capabilities to Intranet/Intranet applications that run through Web browsers such as Netscape.
PowerBuilder 5.0 will also allow developers to build distributed objects that are accessible from Web browsers, and the subsequent release of PowerBuilder will finally allow developers to create OCXs for the Internet/Intranet and traditional-use applications. This means that developers can allow browsers to use existing PowerBuilder capabilities such as rich text format, grids, cross-tab, business graphics, and complex forms. Intranet developers will also have access to PowerBuilder's existing repository, including validation rules, edit masts, and update capabilities.
Oracle's PowerBrowser is a cross between a Web browser, email software, and Oracle Power Objects. PowerBrowser uses a Visual Basic-like Basic programming language, an HTML authoring environment, an integrated email client, an integrated news reader, and Web server capabilities.
Developers build Internet/Intranet applications using PowerBrowser's WYSIWYG HTML authoring tool, which provides the same drag-and-drop application development simplicity as do Visual Basic and Delphi. A PowerBrowser component called Personal Publisher generates the HTML code automatically.
The built-in Basic interpreter allows developers to execute scripts inside HTML documents. This is functionally equivalent to Sun's Java. The combination of scripts and HTML allows developers to build sophisticated Internet/Intranet applications. Developers can also extend the capabilities of a PowerBrowser application using Oracle's Network Loadable Objects (NLOs). NLOs provide developers with a framework to execute third-party network resident applications such as Adobe PDF viewers, Java Applets, and VRML scripts.
Like Power Objects, PowerBrowser includes the native Windows Blaze database for local data storage. However, PowerBrowser can also connect to SQL*Net or Oracle's Web Server Option (providing HTML and CGI capabilities for Oracle database servers).
The availability of easy-to-use tools will drive the Intranet movement. Until recently, the concept of using Web tools as a standard application development environment for the enterprise was unthinkable because Internet application development via traditional mechanisms (such as HTML and CGI) was too complex. The new generation of Internet/Intranet development tools makes application construction as easy as traditional client/server development. Thus, it makes sense for developers and corporations to look to an Intranet as a future application infrastructure.
I believe that both Intranets and the Internet have bright futures as platforms. I also believe that the current convergence of these platforms with client/server development technology has the potential to simplify the client/server application delivery process and finally bring standards (albeit limited standards) to the complex world of client/server development. As client/server developers, we need to add Intranets to our bag of tricks for enterprise application development and deployment.