Adobe AlterCast Automates Image Updating

Adobe Systems Inc. on Monday announced its foray into Web services with a free update to its existing technology that brings dynamic imaging to Web services.

The free update is to its Adobe AlterCast, which delivers dynamic imaging to Web services and supports the major Web services architectures and application server platforms, such as Sun Microsystems Inc.s Sun ONE, IBM Corp.s Web services initiative and WebSphere, Microsoft Corp.s .Net and Oracle Corp.s Oracle 9iAS.

Adobe announced AlterCast at the end of January “as part of an effort to take our desktop intellectual property and put it on the server,” said Gregg Brown, group product manager for Adobe AlterCast servers. The product automates the task of updating images for the Web, print, and wireless devices, the San Jose, Calif., company said.

The AlterCast Web services update enables developers to access AlterCasts automation capabilities over the Internet using Java, .Net or Perl application programming interfaces, Brown said.

With the AlterCast update, developers can, over the Internet, update and reformat text within images with a single command, Brown said. This kind of access is enabled by a Web service implemented by a Java servlet that accepts HTTP and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) requests.

The update “uses SOAP packets, but the user doesnt need to know anything about SOAP,” Brown said. “We also support WSDL (Web Services Description Language), so it works beautifully with .Net. AlterCast is a tool to allow server-side manipulation of graphics and images, particularly in places where image velocity is related to profits.”

Adobe said the new capability provides a single mechanism for handling AlterCast requests and makes it easier to manage the number of inbound connections.