RIA Tools Cover Different Bases

A study commissioned by development company Curl compares RIA development tools from Curl, Microsoft and Adobe.

Development company Curl has announced that it commissioned an independent benchmark study that compares the strengths and weaknesses of some of the leading rich Internet application development platforms on the market.

The benchmark study was carried out by Sonata Software, a global systems integrator and solution provider based in Bangalore, India. Sonata evaluated Adobe Flex, ASP.Net AJAX from Microsoft and the Curl RIA platform.

The study found that ASP.Net AJAX is most appropriate for business-to-consumer transaction applications; Flex is the best choice for solutions that require media content delivery; and Curl is most appropriate for putting RIA capabilities into enterprise-class desktop applications.

Curl officials, in Cambridge, Mass., said the benchmark study was conducted by a four-person development team from Sonata during a two-month period ending in August. During this time, the team built an enterprise-grade RIA—a typical read/write order-entry application.

Resource Library:

To read an eWEEK Labs reivew of Curls RIA platform, click here.

Sonata collected data on factors contributing to ease of learning, ease of design, ease of development and run-time performance of the various technologies.

Among the findings were that ASP.Net AJAX is easy to learn for ASP.Net developers, offers good documentation for UpdatePanel objects and invoking Web services, and is easily programmable.

The study also found that the Adobe Flex framework features languages similar to existing languages used by developers, while also offering easily programmable charts and grids. In addition, invoking Web services with Flex is simple and incorporates a user interface look and feel that is "very attractive," according to the report.

Click here to read more about Adobe Flex.

Meanwhile, the study said, the Curl platform generated an application that was quick to download and fast to start up, and offered good performance on large volumes of data. The study also found that Curl required 34 percent less code than ASP.Net AJAX and 31 percent less than Flex.

Jnan Dash, chief strategy officer at Curl, said, "With the growth of RIA projects both outside and behind the firewall, we realized developers as well as business executives need as much information as possible [in order] to evaluate the technology options available to them. We commissioned this study to address this need so that organizations could accelerate their RIA deployments, ultimately benefiting all companies included in the report."

R. Balasubramanian, assistant vice president of migration and modernization services at Sonata, commented, "The popularity of consumer Web sites such as Google Maps, YouTube and Flickr has created a high demand for Web-based applications in both the consumer and enterprise arenas. To address this need, a number of rich Internet application development platforms have arisen, but with this comes increased confusion about choosing the right technology. This study provides developers and decision makers alike with additional data to help them determine which is the most appropriate technology for their RIA initiative."

Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest news, reviews and analysis in programming environments and developer tools.

Reader Comments: RIA Tools Cover Different Bases >>> Be the FIRST to comment on this article!

>>> More Application Development Articles          >>> More By Darryl K. Taft