We've been developing with WebObjects since day one...

Advantages of WebObjects Based Applications

From an information-technology perspective, WebObjects is a scalable, high-availability, high-performance application server. From our point of view, WebObjects is an extensible object-oriented platform upon which we can rapidly develop and deploy applications that integrate existing data and systems. WebObjects allows us to build applications that leverage the connectivity that the Internet or an intranet provides using a multitiered client-server architecture.

The web was created to simplify access to electronically published documents. Originally webpages were just static text pages with hyperlinks to other documents. However, they quickly evolved into highly graphical animated presentations. Along the way, a degree of interactivity was introduced, allowing people browsing the web to fill out forms and thereby supply data to the server.

WebObjects allows us to take the next logical step. With it, we produce full-fledged applications for use either across the Internet or within a corporate intranet. Users not only fill out forms but can author content stored in back-end databases. By tracking user sessions and preferences, you can offer a custom user experience like a desktop application.

These applications can be web-based, and thus accessible through a web browser, or can have the full interactivity of a stand alone desktop application. Your application can also provide web services to other web applications.

WebObjects has a number of key advantages that allow us to deliver your web based application faster and more flexibly:

• Zero Cost to Mac Developers: The tools and frameworks required to develop and deploy WebObjects applications are free-of-charge for licensed users of Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server.
• Streamlined Database Access: Database tables are represented in WebObjects as collections of Java classes called Enterprise Objects. The developer creates a "model" that maps objects to database rows. This high level of abstraction relieves developers from the drudgery of writing inflexible, database-specific code. With the use of drivers, such as JDBC, WebObjects automatically handles the writing of appropriate SQL code.
• Separation of Presentation Logic, Business Logic, and Data: WebObjects conforms to the Model-View-Controller programming paradigm, enforcing a clean separation of presentation (Web pages), logic (Java code) and data (data store).
• State Management: Without using cookies, WebObjects provides objects that allow you to maintain information for the life of a particular user session, or longer.
• Pure Java: WebObjects applications are 100% Pure Java, which means they can be deployed on any platform with a certified Java 2 virtual machine.
• Scalability and Performance: Administrators run multiple instances of an application, either on one or on multiple application servers. Developers can choose from one of several load-balancing algorithms (or create their own).