InterSystems Corporation announced the immediate availability of CACHE 2007 with innovative technologies for rapid Web application development. This new version of the CACHE post-relational database introduces InterSystems Zen, a framework for building rich platform-independent Web applications faster than ever before. Another new component, called Jalapeno, eliminates object-relational mapping for Java programmers, reducing their development cycles by at least 40 percent.

“With the new rapid development capabilities offered in CACHE 2007, InterSystems has staked out a unique position among database providers,” said Paul Grabscheid, InterSystems Vice President of Strategic Planning. “Now it is possible for Java programmers to avoid the tedious and time-consuming task of object-relational mapping, and CACHE 2007 enables any programmer to build Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) faster.”

InterSystems is a leading provider of database and integration software. The InterSystems product line includes the CACHE post-relational database, Ensemble rapid integration software, and HealthShare health information exchange platform.

InterSystems Zen: Rapid Rich Internet Application Development
Zen, a major new component of CACHE 2007, is an extensible, high-level framework that is optimized for maximum development speed, scalability and deployment of rich data-intensive Web applications. Zen includes an extensive library of pre-built components, including grids, tables, and selection trees, that enables the quick creation and easy management of complex processes. As a result, developers can easily create Web applications with the same highly responsive and rich user interfaces as sophisticated desktop solutions.

With Zen, CACHE 2007 offers an attractive extension to AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) technology for RIA development. CACHE’s advanced security model is embedded into Zen components, alleviating one common headache for Web developers. In addition, Zen’s object-based extensibility makes it possible to extend pre-built components or, if preferred, utilize totally new code developed in-house for fast, easy customization to fulfill enterprise-specific requirements. Zen also utilizes a sophisticated “shared object” client/server data model that improves developer productivity by eliminating the tedium of parsing XML. And, once the application is deployed, close integration with the database ensures a level of application performance and scalability that simply isn’t possible in a traditional AJAX environment.

“We’re evaluating Zen and plan to use it as the Web development framework for adding major new capabilities to our clinical system products,” said Jim Klein, QuadraMed Corporation’s Executive VP and CTO. “Not only does Zen support the migration of our applications to the Web, but it also supports our transition to object-oriented design while providing support for our disciplined approach to application development based on design patterns,” he said. “And, ZEN continues InterSystems’ history of delivering software products that are optimized for RAD and high performance, essential characteristics for enterprise development and deployment.”

Jalapeno: Java Development in Half the Time, Without Mapping
CACHE 2007 also delivers Jalapeno, a new software component that provides the capability to persist plain old Java objects while completely eliminating the need for object-relational mapping. Jalapeno enables Java developers to work in the Java-centric development environment that they prefer and automatically persist objects in the high-performance CACHE database. The result is extremely rapid Java/database application development and deployment. One early Jalapeno user stated that “it took only 15 minutes to persist the objects in CACHE. If I had tried mapping those objects to a relational database, it would have taken months.”

And, CACHE 2007 offers the flexibility needed for Java developers to build database-independent applications with Jalapeno. They can take advantage of optimized direct database access to CACHE for maximum performance without the overhead typically associated with SQL. Alternatively, developers can utilize a relational deployment option with Oracle, SQL Server or other relational databases, if that is the preferred deployment environment.

“Jalapeno is the right tool for any organization that wants to maximize the productivity of Java developers,” Grabscheid noted. “Those developers will be able to achieve major productivity gains while working in their development environment of choice.”

Platforms and Pricing
CACHE 2007 is available on Windows, Linux, Mac, UNIX and OpenVMS platforms. Pricing ranges from $220 to $1,380 per user, depending on configuration.