New Architect > Archives > 2001 > 05 > Programming Product Review

Extending the Web's Reach

By Michiel de Bruijn

IBM's alphaWorks Web site is a repository for research projects. Some are more ready for prime time than others, but all of them are available for free. The site gives you direct access to the latest ideas developing inside IBM. One of the showcased products is Sash Weblications for Windows, which is described as "empowering you to create tomorrow's hottest network applications today." Despite the hype and overly cute "Weblications" moniker, Sash is a very useful and high-quality project that has received surprisingly little publicity since its first version release in 1999.

Sash is a development environment driving a proprietary runtime module (available for Windows and Linux with GNOME) that uses a combination of HTML, client-side scripting, and everyone's favorite data exchange TLA: XML.

Some people might be tempted to dismiss Sash as a gratuitous attempt to reinvent Java. That would be missing the point entirely:

Sash Weblications 2.0 for Windows IBM alphaWorks www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/sash cost: Free technology preview

Pros: Excellent functionality.