TidBITS#584/18-Jun-01
=====================

 So what the heck is WebObjects and where did it come from? Read on
 for the first installment of Jonathan Rentzsch's two-part article
 explaining just what WebObjects is, where it came from, and how it
 compares to other ways of creating Web applications. Also this
 week, Adam gets grumpy about a report about "severe market
 dominance" on the Internet, and we cover the releases of
 IPNetSentry 1.1.1, Rewind 1.2, BBEdit Lite 6.1.1 and icWord 1.2.

Topics:
   MailBITS/18-Jun-01
   We Must Retain Control of the Horizontal...
   WebObjects: WO Is Me, Part 1

<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-584.html>
<ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/issues/2001/TidBITS#584_18-Jun-01.etx>

Copyright 2001 TidBITS Electronic Publishing. All rights reserved.
  Information: <[email protected]> Comments: <[email protected]>
  ---------------------------------------------------------------

This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by:
* READERS LIKE YOU! You can help support TidBITS via our voluntary <- NEW!
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* APS Tech -- 800/395-5871 -- <[email protected]>
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* Small Dog Electronics: PowerLogix G4/450 Upgrade: $389! <---------- NEW!
  FREE RAM & FREE VST CD-RW with PowerBook G4 Titaniums!
  FREE RIO MP3, $69 Epson Rebate, FREE RAM with new iMacs!
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* Bare Bones Software BBEdit 6.1 -- Built for Mac OS X
  The award-winning HTML and text editor is now native for
  Mac OS X. Buy, upgrade, or download the demo at our Web site:
  <http://www.barebones.com/> It doesn't suck.

* ConceptDraw v1.61 -- Create your concept! Ideal tool <------------- NEW!
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  Give it a try at <http://www.conceptdraw.com/>

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  ---------------------------------------------------------------

MailBITS/18-Jun-01
------------------

**Rewind Advances to 1.2** -- Power On Software has updated
 Rewind, its $100 utility for reverting to previous incarnations
 of files or the system in the event of a crash or mistake (see
 "Macworld SF 2001 Trend: Cool Utilities" in TidBITS-564_). Rewind
 1.2 adds the capability to limit the size of the Rewind archive
 (the catalog of changes made to files as you work on the Mac),
 improves stability with programs that handle memory in unusual
 ways, and now correctly handles Virtual PC 4 disk images, among
 other fixes. Although the upgrade is free, you must enter your
 serial number to download the full version of Rewind 1.2,
 including manual (a 7 MB file). Rewind runs under Mac OS versions
 8.1 to 9.1 and requires at least 10 percent of your hard disk
 space to operate. [JLC]

<http://www.poweronsoftware.com/products/rewind/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06280>


**icWord 1.2 Adds Double-Byte Support** -- The recently released
 1.2 update to Panergy's icWord utility for viewing and printing
 Microsoft Word documents can now read files created by the Far
 East version of Microsoft Word, including those in Chinese,
 Japanese, Korean, and other double-byte languages. Other feature
 additions include support for sound, display of footnotes as
 endnotes, and support for Unicode text files. Panergy also
 improved support for Word's built-in graphics, table viewing, and
 paragraph spacing. The update is free and is a 2.0 MB download.
 [ACE]

<http://www.icword.com/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06074>


**IPNetSentry 1.1.1 Traces Intruders** -- Sustainable Softworks
 has released IPNetSentry 1.1.1, a minor update to the company's
 personal firewall software (see "Macworld SF 2001 Trend: Personal
 Firewalls" in TidBITS-564_). This version adds an internal Log
 window for the last 32K of log entries and the capability to
 bypass the splash screen by holding down Command while launching
 the IPNetSentry Companion application. More significant, when
 IPNetSentry detects an intrusion, it enables the user to perform a
 trace route on the intruder's IP address, which can help identify
 the source of an attack. The actual trace route is done through a
 separate Sustainable Softworks' product, IPNetMonitor. Although
 the update to IPNetSentry is free, IPNetMonitor costs $30, and
 it's also included in a variety of bundles with discounted
 pricing. IPNetSentry 1.1.1 is a 1.2 MB download and requires Mac
 OS 7.6.1 and Open Transport 1.1 or later running on a PowerPC-
 based Mac. [ACE]

<http://www.sustworks.com/site/prod_ipns_overview.html>
<http://www.sustworks.com/site/prod_ipmonitor.html>
<http://www.sustworks.com/site/bundles.htm>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06281>


**BBEdit Lite 6.1.1 Fixes Bugs** -- Bare Bones Software has
 released BBEdit Lite 6.1.1, a bug fix update to the company's free
 text editor. BBEdit Lite 6.1.1 now remembers changes to the
 Default Font setting, honors search options in multi-file
 searches, provides dynamic scrolling under Mac OS 8.1 and earlier,
 improves Mac OS X clipboard performance, and fixes a crashing bug
 related to the Hard Wrap command. BBEdit Lite 6.1.1 is a 4.3 MB
 download and requires a PowerPC-based Mac. [ACE]

<http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit_lite.html>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06448>


We Must Retain Control of the Horizontal...
-------------------------------------------
 by Adam C. Engst <[email protected]>

 A recent report from Jupiter Media Metrix made the seemingly
 provocative claim that as of March of 2001, a mere four companies
 control just over 50 percent of all user minutes spent online in
 the U.S. (both home and work). That's down from 11 companies
 controlling 50 percent of online minutes in March of 1999, two
 years ago. Even more provocative is that the number of companies
 controlling 60 percent of online minutes was only 14 in March of
 2001, versus 110 in March of 1999.

<http://www.jup.com/company/pressrelease.jsp?doc=pr010604>

 The four top companies are AOL Time Warner (32 percent), Microsoft
 (7.5 percent), Yahoo (7.2 percent), and Napster (3.6 percent).
 Speaking from a position outside these corporate monoliths, I find
 this report troubling due to its implicit assumptions, and in the
 end, it leads me to an understanding diametrically opposed to the
 report's conclusion that market dominance on the Internet is
 possible.


**Assumption 1: All User Minutes Are Equal** -- Jupiter Media
 Metrix doesn't reveal methodology in the report's summary, but
 in one footnote they do give a hint of the extent to which these
 numbers aren't necessarily comparable. AOL Time Warner's
 percentage seems wildly high, and that's in large part due to the
 fact that two-thirds of the total comes from proprietary
 communications services such as email and instant messaging.
 Remove those services and AOL Time Warner remains in first place,
 but drops to 10.7 percent. None of the other companies (other than
 second-tier Juno, with its proprietary free email service) exert
 the kind of control necessary over communications services to
 include those in this "user minutes" calculation. It's also
 unclear if standard Internet email and non-proprietary instant
 messaging services are included in the user minutes calculation -
 I know I spend a lot more time in Eudora than any other Internet
 application.

 In fact, once you start thinking about what a "user minute" is,
 you wonder why Napster is included at all. Combine the large size
 of MP3 files with the large proportion of the Internet community
 still using modems, and you can see how all those slow downloads
 would confer a vast number of user minutes to Napster. It makes
 some sense to include AOL Time Warner's communications services in
 the calculation, since AOL's use of proprietary software ensures
 they can flash ads or otherwise affect the user experience for the
 entire usage time. Most Napster usage, on the other hand, is
 almost certainly happening in the background, unseen and ignored
 until completion.


**Assumption 2: Users Are Mindless Minute Generators** -- TidBITS
 exists primarily to help information flow to and from the
 individuals who make up the Macintosh Internet community. That
 involves constantly interacting with our readers, who are
 intelligent, interesting people who have chosen to spend their
 time reading and responding to our articles. It's a constant give
 and take, and although our approach to publishing would
 undoubtedly require modification if we had millions of readers,
 I still find myself cringing whenever I read phrases like
 "controlling user minutes" or "monetizing the user."

 The implication in the report seems to be that users don't have
 any choice in what they do, that they're compelled to use the
 services provided by the big four. I use Yahoo a fair amount, but
 that's because I like Yahoo's services and design, not because
 Yahoo has in some way locked me in. In fact, my impression is that
 Internet users are incredibly fickle, and it wouldn't take much
 for any one of the top four to drop fast in the rankings.
 Napster's suffering that drop even now, thanks to losing the first
 rounds in its legal battle with the recording industry, reducing
 the amount (and accessibility) of popular material previously
 available through its service. Plus, other services are quickly
 filling in the vacuum Napster has left behind.

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06346>

 For anyone in the Internet media business, I'd recast the entire
 situation in terms of needing to earn and retain the loyalty of
 online users. There are certainly ways of encouraging users to
 stick within a single company's services, ranging from AOL's
 proprietary interface to Microsoft's pushing of MSN on the Windows
 desktop, but in the end, it comes down to providing quality
 services that offer real value to users.


**Assumption 3: The Rest of the Internet Is Uninteresting** --
 What about the 40 percent of user minutes that aren't "controlled"
 by these 14 companies? They don't warrant even a mention in the
 report, and yet, I'd wager that if you asked people what they
 remembered about an online session, it would be more likely to be
 some piece of personal email or an unusual Web page or service,
 not the bland portal that delivered the day's weather report. What
 sets the Internet apart from other mass media vehicles is that
 it's incredibly deep. Consider how shallow television, radio,
 movies, and even books, software, and magazines are. In these
 other arenas, there are relatively few producers, and the barriers
 to production remain high. In theory, such a situation lets the
 market create quality, but as we've seen, it means instead that
 the market enforces only a least common denominator.

 This isn't to imply that independent content is good, because most
 isn't. Sturgeon's Law states that 90 percent of science fiction is
 crud, but that's because 90 percent of everything is crud. So if
 90 percent of television shows are crud (an optimistic estimate),
 the remaining 10 percent add up to a small number. But when you
 apply the same logic to the Internet, if only 10 percent of the
 Web sites and services out there are any good, you still end up
 with a vast number of worthwhile spots in the morass of crud.

 That's an important difference, and is an interesting shift in the
 standard quality versus quantity argument. The sheer quantity of
 Internet sites almost ensures that quality can't be lost, as it is
 so often in situations where the barriers to entry are essentially
 insurmountable.


**Assumption 4: Information Monocultures Are Good** -- Are there
 any lessons to be learned from Jupiter Media Metrix's report? Yes,
 but not the one the report's authors expect. They portray it as
 evidence that severe market dominance is indeed possible on the
 Internet, despite the infinite number of "channels," as they so
 quaintly state it. That's true, but isn't particularly
 interesting, for the simple reason that most of the heavily used
 services on the Internet have been replicated numerous times with
 little variability. Headline news, stock quotes, telephone number
 lookups, mapping services, Web-based email, search engines,
 comparison shopping services - you name it and it's been done by
 many different companies at this point. So when you look at Yahoo,
 MSN, AOL, and Netscape, they're all offering roughly the same
 content and functionality, and which one any given person uses is
 likely due to either to personal preference or to some outside
 factor. The fact that other companies offering similar services
 have fallen away or been acquired isn't much of a revelation or
 even, frankly, much of a concern.

 Diversity is the most important aspect of the Internet, and the
 kinds of content and services from the largest companies are the
 information equivalent of cash crop monocultures. Biological
 monocultures trade off high levels of production against
 susceptibility to catastrophic disease and environmental damage,
 and I'd argue there's a similar trade-off in the world of data,
 information, knowledge, and thought. One commonly cited biological
 parallel is the modern computer virus, which thrives in the near-
 monoculture of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft's Outlook email
 client. Another parallel is the concept of the meme, a self-
 replicating, contagious idea, which has also become well accepted.

<http://www.memecentral.com/>

 Apply that analogy to information and thought in general, and I
 think it's clear that the Internet, and more specifically, the bit
 of the Internet that isn't generated in a corporate monoculture,
 is an essential part of our intellectual evolution. Why? Because
 evolution requires raw materials with which to work. That's why
 sexual reproduction has proven so evolutionarily successful - the
 immense number of possible DNA combinations ensures constant
 change and experimentation. The information made accessible by the
 Internet can be seen as the DNA of new ideas, without which we
 can't move forward and may even inflict significant damage on
 ourselves as a species. So do your part for the intellectual
 future of the human race and venture out to some of the lesser-
 travelled nodes of the Internet!


WebObjects: WO Is Me, Part 1
----------------------------
 by Jonathan "Wolf" Rentzsch <[email protected]>

 AppleScript used to be Apple's best kept secret. It broke
 technological ground that is still unmatched by any other
 platform, but was largely ignored except by a handful of
 enthusiasts. The situation has improved in the last few years,
 with the technology even making it into a Steve Jobs keynote
 (although widespread AppleScript support in Mac OS X remains
 elusive). One way or another, these days more people know about
 AppleScript, but now Apple has a new best kept secret: WebObjects.

 In NeXT's waning days, WebObjects was the product that kept the
 company going. It wasn't cheap: an unlimited connection license
 cost $50,000. But even at that price, WebObjects was cost-
 competitive with other similar products.

 At last year's World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), Jobs
 dropped a bombshell: a new, flat price of $700 for WebObjects.
 Although WebObjects isn't an attention-getting consumer product
 like the much-hyped iTools or iDVD, the price drop caused interest
 to b
oom. And at this year's WWDC, Apple released WebObjects 5,
 written entirely in Java, which promises to be especially
 interesting for customers running Mac OS X or Mac OS X Server.

<http://www.apple.com/webobjects/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05950>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06440>

 Before we talk about WebObjects specifically, though, it helps to
 gain an understanding about WebObjects' class of software:
 application servers. This article provides a brief history of
 application servers and offers an overview of the various software
 architectures used by WebObjects and its competitors. The next
 installment will focus on WebObjects, including its three major
 tools and sore points.


**Application Servers** -- WebObjects was the original application
 server - an environment for developing and deploying applications
 meant to be accessed via a Web browser.

 In many ways, application servers are a throwback to the days of
 the mainframe. Back then, a single big machine would do
 everything, while multiple inexpensive terminals plugged into the
 mainframe. The terminals were extremely lightweight computers -
 they could do little more than display received text and transmit
 keystrokes back to the mainframe.

 The personal computer revolution gave individual users the
 capability to run their own software, freeing them from the
 tyranny of the corporate information systems priesthood. But a
 funny thing happened on the way to the revolution: people wanted
 to share their information and programs.

 Personal and centralized file sharing helped folks share their
 information, but sharing software was problematic. Programs
 developed for one platform wouldn't run on another. Software had
 to be purchased, installed and maintained for each and every
 computer, dramatically raising costs and complexity. Programs also
 had to be specialized to handle different types of data; for
 example, some shared information should only be accessed through
 programs which can ensure validity, such as customer databases.

 Then the Web happened. The message was HTML and the medium was
 HTTP. Any computer could retrieve documents from any other
 computer, diminishing the platform problem. Even more exciting was
 that the Web enabled folks to set up programs that could be
 accessed using HTML's rudimentary support for inputting data.

 In short order, the Macs in Graphics and the PCs in Accounting
 could access the same vacation forms served by the Unix box in
 Human Resources. What's more, the capability to communicate
 between platforms meant that software installation and maintenance
 could happen on the company's central server. When a bug was fixed
 or a feature was added, only the server needed to be updated - all
 the clients instantly and automatically took advantage of the
 upgrade the next time they used it.

 "Thin clients" - inexpensive computers running lightweight
 software like a browser or Java interpreter - captured all the
 buzz. Why spend resources catering to lots of individual computers
 on a network when you can manage them centrally like the former
 mainframe system? But to remove weight from the clients, weight
 had to be added to the servers. The servers held all the program's
 logic as well as all of the user's data. Multiple users across the
 company (or the world!) would all simultaneously hammer the
 servers night and day.

 Programmers faced tight software development timelines, amazing
 software complexity, and the requirement that the server almost
 never go down. NeXT was in a unique position to create and sell
 tools and services that addressed all these issues.

 NeXT was known from the beginning as having some of the finest
 development tools available. Object-oriented to the core, these
 tools enabled quick development of complex applications. And
 NeXT's software ran on Unix and Windows NT - industrial strength
 operating systems that could provide the needed uptime
 requirements of mission-critical servers. NeXT leveraged all this
 to create WebObjects.


**Three Fundamentals** -- Application servers consist of three
 parts: the interface, the program's logic, and the data access.

* The interface is what we users see and interact with. Typically
 it's the HTML we view via our Web browsers, though Java can also
 provide an interface.

* The program's logic is composed of the rules and procedures that
 run businesses. For example, it's the program's logic that won't
 let you purchase a book from an online bookseller if the book is
 no longer in circulation. Applications contain hundreds or
 thousands of such rules. When to add tax. How much tax to add. How
 big a box to use for the shipment. Is the credit card valid? Do
 any ongoing sales apply to the current purchase? And so on.

* Finally, data access is the portion of the application which
 interacts with the database to create, view, update and delete
 information. As I discussed in "Relational Databases and Mac OS X"
 in TidBITS-580_ and TidBITS-581_, businesses prefer relational
 databases for these kinds of tasks.

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbser=1197>

 WebObjects is no longer alone in the application server
 marketplace. There are now numerous players, and they differ
 primarily in how they separate the three fundamentals above. It's
 instructional to study the different models: you can see a clear
 evolution of design. What I find most impressive is that all these
 models are slowly moving towards a common design: the design of
 WebObjects.

 Follow along with this slightly artificial evolution of
 application servers. For each one, I'll lay out the background and
 talk about some of the different packages out there. Some are
 free, open source. Some cost tens of thousands of dollars per
 _processor_. Although these lists are cursory, over-generalized
 and will be outdated quickly, they should give you the lay of the
 land.


**Stone Age: Logic First, Everything Bound Together** -- The Stone
 Age design is typified by a focus on the logic of dynamic page
 generation. Almost all programming languages can be made to accept
 Web queries and generate HTML documents based on the query's
 results (some commonly used languages are C, Perl, AppleScript,
 and Java).

 These Web applications usually access a data source to answer the
 incoming query. Some may manually scan a file for the information,
 others will generate an SQL query based on the client's query, and
 fire it off to a database. If the Web application is calculation-
 focused, then it may not need to access a data source.

 I don't intend to disparage the Logic First design with the Stone
 Age label. Instead, I'm simply trying to indicate its age (it was
 the first design) and complexity (not much at all). The Stone Age
 design is lightweight, and everything lightweight has advantages.
 It feels natural to programmers, and it is quick and easy to get
 a dynamic page up because everything is in one place. For
 calculation-intensive applications, Stone Age design may be the
 best.

 However the Stone Age design is not without disadvantages. The
 first problem is that data access information is embedded into the
 logic. Technologies were introduced to help deal with this hard-
 wired database reliance. C and C++ programmers on Windows (and to
 a much lesser extent, on the Mac) have Microsoft's Open Database
 Connectivity (ODBC), Java programmers have Java Database
 Connectivity (JDBC), while Perl has its Database Interface (DBI).

 It's important to understand that these technologies only provide
 a means of finding and _connecting_ to a database. When it comes
 to moving data in and out of a database, you must still write and
 embed SQL into your program logic. Since SQL refers to specific
 table and column names, the onus is on you to keep the embedded
 queries synchronized with your database.

 Another disadvantage is that the logic plus interface plus data
 design fundamentally ties one page to one chunk of code. If you
 need to share logic among multiple pages, it's up to you to work
 out a code sharing strategy and keep it all up to date.

 The final disadvantage of the Stone Age design is that the
 interface is embedded within the application's logic. This means
 only a programmer can change how a page looks, or how it displays
 its information.

 Examples of Stone Age tools include AppleScript, C/C++, Java,
 JavaScript, Perl, Python, and the Windows-only Visual Basic. You
 can tell that these tools focus on logic because they're all
 programming languages. They're great at representing logical
 decisions and operations, but suffer when forced to deal with data
 access and interface generation. Later models use some of these
 languages to handle the logical part of a Web application.


**Bronze Age: Interface First, Everything Bound Together** --
 After churning out a few hundred dynamic pages, programmers found
 themselves in an interesting situation. Quite often, their dynamic
 pages were a thin veneer of logic and data access, containing a
 huge glob of interface in HTML. Plus, the business folks and
 graphic artists were always bugging the programmers with
 appearance change requests.

 Programmers, being the lazy clever folks they are, simply flipped
 the Stone Age design relationship. Instead of embedding interface
 within logic, they embedded logic within interface. Now you had
 pages composed predominately of HTML, with custom tags containing
 the globs of logic. With a sigh of relief, the programmers could
 give the files to the better Web designers (the kind who work at
 the raw textual HTML level), tell them to avoid the logic globs,
 and the Web designers could change the page's appearance without
 going through the programmer.

 Some programmers even went so far as to write WYSIWYG-style HTML
 editors which knew about (and hid) the logic globs, so even non-
 professional Web designers could change a page's appearance.

 Like the Stone Age, the Bronze Age design has the advantages that
 it's easy to start and everything is in one place. But while the
 Bronze Age design somewhat relieved the Stone Age design's final
 disadvantage, it didn't address the first two. Namely, data access
 is still embedded (either within the page's interface or logic)
 and code sharing among pages is still a problem.

 Examples of Bronze Age tools include Active Server Pages (ASP),
 Java Server Pages (JSP), Lasso, and PHP. These tools all embed
 programming logic inside HTML. ASP typically uses Visual Basic,
 JSP uses Java, Lasso has its own proprietary tag-based language,
 and PHP uses its own language as well.

 With some fancy footwork, all of these solutions can be moved to
 the Industrial Age model, but that's not how they were initially
 designed. Although both JSP and PHP run fine on Mac OS X, Lasso is
 uniquely Macintosh friendly, with the capability to run under the
 Classic Mac OS and offering direct connections to FileMaker Pro
 and 4D. Future versions of Lasso will also work with Mac OS X.


**Industrial Age: Interface First, Separate Interface** -- As
 projects got larger, the code duplication of the Bronze Age design
 became a nightmare.

 Whenever a bug was discovered or a feature added, the programmers
 would have to go through each file and apply the fixes.
 Programmers had to spend time keeping track of all code copies and
 variants, or just hope they remembered to update everything.
 Software quality quickly degraded as everything became an
 entangled patchwork of slightly different code.

 The Industrial Age design solved the code duplication problem by
 moving logic out of the interface. However, the data access is
 still embedded within the logic, leading to much of the same
 synchronization problems as the Bronze Age's embedded logic model.

 Examples of Industrial Age tools include Cold Fusion, WebLogic,
 WebSphere, and customized Bronze Age tools. For instance, with
 some up-front work and consistent discipline, you can use the
 Industrial Age model for projects using Active Server Pages, Java
 Server Pages, and PHP. Lasso also supports server-side JavaScript
 in addition to its proprietary tag-based language.

 Alas, short of Lasso, none of these tools are offered explicitly
 for the Mac. Cold Fusion puts most of its logic in separate
 server-side files containing a proprietary JavaScript-like
 language called CFScript. WebLogic and WebSphere are
 implementations of the so-called "Enterprise Java Beans" (EJB)
 container specification, and they provide Java-based logic and
 object storage to Java Server pages. Although WebLogic and
 WebSphere don't disallow putting logic directly into pages, most
 folks know enough not to make a habit of it.


**Information Age: Everything Balanced and Separated** -- The
 Information Age design separates everything from each other.
 Interface, logic and data access all stand alone and interact via
 explicit architectural channels.

 You can hand a bunch of pages to an outside Web design firm
 without handing them your business logic. The crazed nerds in the
 back room can crank code without having to worry about color
 coordination of Web pages, or which brand of database the company
 is currently using. The database folks can move and rename
 databases, tables and columns without fear of breaking the Web
 application.

 Or one developer can work incredibly quickly.

 The Information Age design is not without it flaws. Everything is
 spread out, in different places. Often it's not immediately
 obvious how modifying one aspect changes another, and the learning
 curve tends to be much steeper.

 The only two examples of Information Age tools in my mind are
 customized Lasso and WebObjects. Since Lasso can shield you from
 SQL and allows separation of your JavaScript-based application
 logic from its interface, it fits into the Information Age model.
 It's the only product that spans the Bronze Age all the way to the
 Information Age. That's interesting - you can start off using the
 fairly easy-to-understand Bronze Age model and work your way up to
 the Information Age model as necessary. Sure, you'll throw away a
 lot of work as you grow, but it's an option that simply doesn't
 exist with other tools.

 Although WebObjects has a much steeper learning curve than Lasso,
 and doesn't run on the Classic Mac OS, it beats Lasso in terms of
 maturity and power. In the next installment of this article, I'll
 look more closely at exactly what WebObjects provides.

 [Jonathan "Wolf" Rentzsch is the embodiment of Red Shed Software,
 and runs a monthly Mac programmer get-together in Northwest
 Illinois.]

 $$

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