SAN MATEO (03/24/2000) - Webgain Inc., an independent company formed earlier this year by application server vendor BEA Systems Inc. and Warburg Pincus Ventures, was officially launched thisweek at the Software Development 2000 West show in San Jose, California, where it introduced a product suite that takes a component-based approach to e-commerce application development.
One component of that package, dubbed WebGain Studio, is the VisualCafe rapid application development environment that WebGain acquired with its purchase of Symantec's application development tools product line in January of this year.
Company officials also announced that WebGain has acquired tools vendor Tendril Software, and it will include Tendril's StructureBuilder development tools in WebGain Studio.
To fill out its technical coverage, WebGain also will integrate Macromedia's DreamWeaver HTML authoring tool and TopLink, the Java-based object-relational mapping product from The Object People, into the suite.
The combination of those products, said WebGain officials, provides an environment that will increase the ease and efficiency with which users can develop component-based Java applications for the Web.
The initial release of WebGain Studio will be integrated with the BEA WebLogic application server. It is expected to ship within 30 days.
Soon thereafter, WebGain will offer versions of WebGain Studio for the IBM WebSphere and Sun iPlanet application servers. Integration with other application servers is expected to follow those.
WebGain Studio will be available in both Standard and Professional versions, with Professional adding object-relational database mapping, and will link to existing tools and legacy systems through the WebGain Open API, which will ship with the product.
WebGain Inc., in Cupertino, Calif., is at www.webgain.com.