Mainsoft: Interop mainstay
By Jack Vaughan
Mainsoft Corp. is one of a few companies that have made their mark in cross-platform development tools. It has been prominent in a field others have eschewed, going back to the days before Java, when the ‘war’ was between Unix and Windows.
Over the years Mainsoft has forged deals, sometimes controversial, to use Microsoft source code in order to provide broader platform support. In the fall, Mainsoft announced services and support for IBM WebSphere Everyplace Deployment 6.0, so that one can run .NET Web applications natively on WebSphere software running on a Linux desktop.
As more companies find a need to support both Java and .NET applications, Mainsoft has expanded its product portfolio to include various means of J2EE and .NET interoperation.
Early last year, the company forged a deal with Azul Compute Appliances to enable shops to run .NET and Java applications in the same server pool. Can it be said that the data center is driving many interoperability scenarios today?
While compute appliances are far from mainstream, it does seem that bigger companies are pushing to consolidate server operations, and these companies tend to have a mix of platforms supported. Linux too, is firmly entrenched now in many data centers. Microsoft itself may be paying attention now. Witness the alliance based around SUSE Linux that Microsoft recently announced with Novell.
Around the time of Mainsoft’s pact with Azul, we spoke with Yaacov Cohen, president and CEO of Mainsoft. He said Mainsoft’s path was to solve interoperability issues at compile time. .NET developers work as they are accustomed to; at compilation, that code is converted into Java byte code. Will the day come when creating a .NET app will not automatically mean deploying to a Windows server? Cohen and others think so.
Related: Hints and Tips for Effective Porting - Mainsoft Site
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