Curl: Pioneering Rich Clients for SOAs
A new class of presentation layer is emerging to solve a range of user interface challenges. Users are demanding a rich client interface to Web Services that provides an end user experience similar to client/server applications, with a rich graphical user interface, responsive performance and highly interactive functionality. The goal of this emerging rich client solution is to provide the optimal combination of rich, low-cost interaction through standards-based distributed computing.
Curl is a veteran to the market of rich client solutions for distributed Internet applications. The basis of their solution is their own runtime environment called Surge that provides an executable environment for the Curl language. Curl also provides a language that supports a rich set of user interface capabilities that users can extend to provide additional functionality, from simple macros to direct control over the positioning of subcomponents.