About REA

What's REA All About?

Rich Enterprise Applications (REAs) are an exciting new class of enterprise Web 2.0 business application. Like the more widely-known Rich Internet Application (RIA), a REA offers huge advances in usability and interactivity. But a REA extends far beyond a simple RIA to also integrate seamless connectivity between Ajax-based Web applications and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) business services.

REAs consume SOA services for rapid application creation and deployment. True REA solutions consume SOA services produced from any standards-driven middleware or third-party service provider. It's important to note that REAs are not a competitor or replacement for products or service firms focused on producing and exposing SOA services-rather, REAs complement and leverage the services produced by these efforts. REAs "put a face on SOA" by delivering Web-based applications that use information exposed in SOA services.

REAs leverage your investment in SOA and the power of Ajax, and combine the two to enable innovative new business and application models such as Software as a Service (SaaS), enterprise mashups, next-generation portals, and browser-based composite applications. REA solutions also have built-in facilities to ensure high levels of security, scalability and reliability while reducing software and support costs through browser-based application development and delivery.

What's the Difference Between RIAs and REAs?

Put simply, RIAs incorporate new client-side Web technologies such as Ajax or Flash/Flex to improve the user experience and functionality of Web-based applications. As a result, most RIAs aren't really built from the ground up. Instead, RIAs are usually created by adding Ajax or Flex client-side components to existing page-based Web applications.

RIA technologies are clearly a great step forward, but implementing them still requires skilled programmers and lots of custom code. And while it's possible to access SOA services within an RIA, it's a job that often requires yet more middleware and custom programming.

By contrast, REAs represent a broader, standards-based approach that spans the client, communication, and server tiers. This makes REAs much more suitable for the enterprise, the basic RIA concept is extended to enable rapid and easy integration of Web-based Ajax applications with server-side SOA assets while still allowing IT to manage, govern, and secure those assets.

REA Components

A true REA integrates three fundamental components — Ajax, SOA, and the Web-into a complete solution:

• Ajax is the set of open, standards-based Web application technologies used to manage the user interaction, client-side logic processing, and browser-to-server interaction management. Ajax is the client-side 'glue' that makes the rich interactivity of REAs possible, and includes all of the browser-based portions of applications. Note that traditional RIAs can also achieve similar interactivity with proprietary technologies like Flex, but true REAs use Ajax to satisfy the 'open, standards-based' requirement.
• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) represents the manner in which enterprises can best expose the data and services required by applications. SOA is an open, standards-based architectural style for exposing loosely-coupled business services. The benefits of SOA-based architectures, including re-usability and the elimination of 'data silos', have driven the SOA initiatives already underway within most large enterprises. A true REA solution enables cataloging and very easy binding of client-side Ajax components to back-end services.
• The Web completes the picture by supplying the communication channel between Ajax browser-based applications and the SOA business services.

Benefits of REA

In addition to delivering all of the widely-recognized usability benefits of RIAs, a complete REA solution offers several major new benefits:

1. User-driven integration - Because RIAs are based on traditional application development models, they require IT programmers and assume pre-definition of the data and manipulation needs of the user. By contrast, REA solutions empower line-of-business developers to quickly create new applications that leverage pre-defined SOA services and processes to solve unanticipated business needs. User-driven integration frees IT from having to predict in advance the integration and data needs of its business users, and empowers users to incorporate governed SOA services without IT involvement.

2. SOA Service Governance - Service governance includes business service registration, service access control, service access mediation and service data conversion to ensure corporate policies and procedures. Robust service governance enables IT to empower line-of-business groups while still maintaining its own role in service production, governance, security policies, and IT asset management.

3. Reliable Web Connectivity - While basic Web connectivity has become ubiquitous and is more than adequate for consumer-focused Web applications, its reliability is often a concern for enterprises that want to deliver business-critical REAs. Rather than simply depending on the browser's native communication capabilities, a complete REA solution incorporates additional facilities to ensure the reliable, efficient, secure, and scalable communication channel needed for enterprise-grade applications.

JackBe and REAs

JackBe is an industry pioneer with years of experience in applying our NQ Ajax Framework and services to deliver mission-critical Ajax applications for major enterprises worldwide. We've also assembled a dream technology team with deep knowledge of not just Ajax, but also of SOA and enterprise architecture. Our Presto REA Platform is the industry’s most comprehensive solution for delivering enterprise Ajax applications based on SOA and Web services. Applications built on the Presto platform gain business-class reliability, scalability, and service governance. The results are highly interactive browser–based applications that help users to optimize both their regular and ad hoc activities.

Enterprises are making significant investments to create SOA infrastructures that produce SOA and Web services. The focus is now shifting to “putting a face on SOA” by enabling distributed business units to easily consume these services and thus accelerate SOA benefits and ROI. JackBe’s Presto enables enterprises to fully realize their SOA vision through Rich Enterprise Applications deployed at the forefront of business.

So if your organization has committed to a SOA strategy, contact us to discuss how Presto can help you leverage that investment. We promise it'll be worth your time!