A Server with a Silver Lining

David Skok, founder of SilverStream, dropped by the office recently to show off the current release of the SilverStream Application Platform, and we at Web Techniques were truly impressed. With this weighty Web-application server, SilverStream has taken a hard look at the direction of three-tier application development and now aims to solve the development process at the infrastructure level.

The SilverStream Application Server speaks HTTP, thus replacing an existing server, and provides a Java framework for client/server development, including many precanned applications, wizards, and visual-design tools. It's a multithreaded, 100 percent pure Java HTTP server that provides session management, authentication, database access and update, Fulcrum full-text indexing and retrieval, security enforcement, agents, and email integration. Since SilverStream stores Web pages in database BLOB (binary large object) fields, the content can be managed in a collaborative fashion, allowing the design of approval processes prior to publishing as well as version tracking. The product ships with a Java HTML edit control that allows end users to create or edit Web pages that are stored in the database, facilitating many collaborative applications.

The SilverStream Designer is an object-oriented, 100 percent pure Java visual-development environment that enables development of Java and dynamic HTML-based applications.