New Opal tool shines for Web
Infresco, a subsidiary of Computer Associates, makes good on promises to equip its Opal legacy development tool with Web-friendly features.
Opal 2.0, announced today at the Demo 97 conference in Indian Wells, California, lets corporate developers give existing client-server, mainframe, and other so-called legacy applications a face-lift to produce new multimedia client applications. The new applications can be deployed standalone on Windows 95 and Windows NT or as a browser-based Java component client.
Opal serves as both the development toolset and the graphical interface to the applications. The tool includes Opal Integrator, a design and integration tool for mapping existing applications to a new Opal interface, and Opal Server, a server-based component that provides communications with host systems and databases.
Opal client and server components communicate via dedicated TCP/IP connections to ensure high-speed links between clients and back-end data sources.
The tool also includes software distribution and management facilities.
CA executives said Opal differs from other "screen scrapers" in its appearance. Infresco, a 60-person, Sarasota, Florida-based start-up launched last December, employs several developers who built CA's multimedia-rich consumer software. They have used some of the same multimedia technology to give Opal applications a more snazzy look than other business software, said company executives.
Infresco has not announced pricing for Opal 2.0, which is set to ship in the second quarter. Opal 1.0 is priced at $995 per developer and at $995 per run-time license.