Coming in the wake of JavaTM Pet Store demo software and .NET Pet Shop from Microsoft, Macromedia has just released Pet Market 1.2, which demonstrates how Macromedia's family of development products can give developers using JavaTM 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EETM) technology another great option for quick development of sites that deliver results.

Jon Byous describes Pet Market 1.2 as "a complete platform for developing and deploying Rich Internet Applications," saying that Macromedia intends it to be used to provide "more engaging user interfaces, two-way communications and high-performance business applications that can be delivered with existing network and enterprise infrastructure via the widely deployed Macromedia Flash Player."

The Pet Market development team produced ColdFusion MX, a Web application development and deployment platform with an easy-to-learn scripting language, CFML, that is essentially a J2EE specification-compliant application server in disguise. The richness of the platform and its ease of use make this attribute all but irrelevant to developers, however.

Now Macromedia has released ColdFusion MX for the J2EE platform. Sites already using J2EE technology-compliant application servers -- including the SunTM Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) Application Server (formerly known as iPlanetTM Application Server) -- add the simplicity of CFML to existing infrastructure. Developers who use client-side Macromedia Flash MX in combination with server-side ColdFusion MX can build reusable object components with extended capabilities.

According to Jeremy Allaire, Macromedia's chief technology officer, "...the Macromedia Flash Player could help transform static and cumbersome user interfaces into rich, engaging and interactive applications. More importantly, it could help put into place a more clearly defined presentation layer or client-tier in the Internet application stack."

Macromedia has included the Verity K2 full-text search and indexing engine with ColdFusion MX to provide a scalable cross-platform search engine that can find products by descriptions, as well as customer reviews and feature articles.

Allaire points out that the Pet Market development team, with no previous experience in using ColdFusion, completed the back-end of the application in two weeks. The server-side scripting capabilities of ColdFusion MX, added to a J2EE infrastructure, can give development teams plenty of time to concentrate on front-end user experience while still exploiting the strengths of the J2EE platform.

Byous cites the shopping cart interface, which Macromedia collapsed into a single cohesive experience rather than the customary sluggish series of screens, as a notable reusable feature. "If you're developing a multi-step, multi-page forms-based application," he continues, "Macromedia's Pet Market demo may be able to help save you some time and provide added functionality." Byous predicts that similar shopping carts will soon proliferate on e-commerce sites and that ColdFusion MX will lead to yet other forms-based applications such as Web-based sales force automation and customer service.

For a look at similar sample applications, including a car dealer extranet, an address book, online record store, mortgage calculator and a product configurator, go to the Macromedia Web site.

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