What is WebObjects?
A set of prebuilt application modules, integrated development tools, and supporting technologies for rapidly building and deploying dynamic websites that are fully integrated with existing data and applications across your enterprise.

What hardware/software do I need?
Build and deploy your web application on popular operating systems, use standard HTTP servers, plug into your current relational databases, mainframes, and Windows applications. Your customers can use any web browser.

Why should I choose WebObjects to build my dynamic website?
WebObjects consists of proven, reliable software thats been sold commercially for nearly ten years. While other web tools are lucky to be in Beta, WebObjects is shipping to customers and it can be shipped to you today.

How does WebObjects support Java, ActiveX, and plug-ins?
WebObjects can download Java and ActiveX applets, vend Shockwave, VRML, and RealAudio documents, and support any other web technology. Using WebObjects, Java developers will be able to access data in relational databases and mainframes, and in Windows applications via OLE.

Who can build a dynamic site with WebObjects?
Webmasters, MIS professionals, and programmers familiar with PERL, HTML, JavaScript, Java, Visual Basic, C, or C++.

What about my legacy data?
WebObjects can easily map legacy database applications to the Web.

What does WebObjects do better than other back-end web tools?
Leverage your existing data sources and applications to automatically build web pages on the fly. Other tools create only static HTML pages that are difficult to integrate with existing corporate data and services. With WebObjects, developers can easily build, maintain, and evolve truly interactive applications deployed across diverse technologies.

What can WebObjects do for my business?
Extend sales and customer services to the Web, provide universal access to corporate MIS and other employee services on an Intranet, and put you in constant control of your changing business model.

Am I free to adopt new technologies later?
Yes. Adopt new operating systems, programming tools, web server hardware, data sources and keep using WebObjects.

How does WebObjects handle security?
WebObjects leverages the existing and upcoming security technology used in HTTP servers and browsers for ensuring secure communications across the network. Today, these technologies include SSL, SHTTP, and SET. In addition, NeXT has a partnership with Security Dynamics to provide tokencard-based user authentication.

How do I get started with WebObjects?
Call 1-800-Try-NeXT to order WebObjects Pro or WebObjects Enterprise.

Can NeXT help me with planning and development?
Yes. Our professional services group can help you plan and build your dynamic web application. Combine proven technology with training, consulting and support from a team of experts to take full advantage of WebObjects and get to market fast.

Supported
technologies

What platforms can I develop on?
You can currently build web applications on Windows NT, OPENSTEP, and NEXTSTEP.

What platforms can I deploy on?
You can distribute the objects in your WebObjects application across server platforms including Windows NT, Solaris, OPENSTEP, and NEXTSTEP.

Can I use existing servers such as Netscape, NCSA, or CERN?
Yes. WebObjects will use these existing servers' APIs. In addition, NeXT includes its own HTTP server with WebObjects for improved performance and integration of objects.

What data sources can my web application integrate with?
Your web application can integrate with Oracle, Sybase, Informix, DB2, and ODBC-Compliant databases. You can also integrate with object-oriented databases, online data feeds, and through the help of third parties, legacy mainframes.

What programming enviornments can I use?
You can currently program your application in C, C++, WebScript, and Objective C. In upcoming releases, you'll be able to choose from Java, JavaScript, and Visual Basic Script.

Does WebObjects support CORBA?
At ObjectWorld in August of 1995, NeXT announced its support for CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) 2.0 as outlined by the Object Management Group (OMG). At the event, NeXT demonstrated WebObjects communicating with other vendor's CORBA compliant systems on the show floor. NeXT plans to release this functionality by the end of 1996.

Products &
customers

What are the WebObjects products?
WebObjects Pro adds the ability to compile in C, C++, and Object C, to integrate your applications with OLE applications, and to scale across multiple servers. It also includes a graphic web development tool.
WebObjects Enterprise WebObjects Enterprise is for building truly scalable multi-tier web applications that plug into standard databases such as Oracle, Sybase, and Informix as well as mainframes. These applications can also share business logic with other client/server Windows-based applications.

When was WebObjects announced? Is it shipping?
NeXT announced and demonstrated WebObjects at ObjectWorld, San Francisco, in August 1995. NeXT announced that it would ship the product in the first calendar quarter of 1996. Unlike many other web technologies that are lucky to exist in Beta, NeXT met its ambitious schedule and shipped WebObjects Release 1.0 on-time in March 1996. WebObjects Release 2.0 shipped the following June.

Who are some of NeXT's customers using WebObjects today? Cambridge Animation, Dell Computer, Dreamworks, FNMA, Merrill Lynch, Motorola, Prospex, Reebok, Sharper Image, Unberman Bass, and Weatherlabs are just some of the customers building dynamic websites with WebObjects.

What types of applications are they building?
NeXT's customers are using WebObjects for both global internet and corporate intranet applications, including reservation systems, virtual catalogs, customer services, groupware, and several migration projects from Windows applications to the web.

WebObjects
in the marketplace

Does WebObjects have competition?
A few companies have products that compete with an individual feature of WebObejcts, but WebObjects is the only complete solution for developing server-side web applications that truly integrate with the enterprise. WebObjects supports multiple databases, OLE, mainframes and will soon offer CORBA support. WebObjects allows developers to build true multi-tier applications that separate business logic from data and the user interface. In addition, the business logic can be reused within native Windows applications.

Does WebObjects compete with Microsoft or Netscape's web strategies? No. WebObjects is complementary to the internet offerings of both Microsoft and Netscape. In fact, Netscape has even teamed its top internet tools with WebObjects.WebObjects supports Netscape HTTP servers and the Microsoft Internet Information Servers, and applications built with WebObjects can be viewed on Netscape and Microsoft web browsers (and all web browsers, for that matter).

How is WebObjects different from using PERL or other popular scripting languages?
PERl and other scripting languages aren't robust development tools. A robust development environment includes libraries and frameworks for building complex applications that require data access from relational databases and mainframes as well as real-time feeds. WebObjects provides developers with these tools and allows them to use familiar compiled languages as the syntax for writing the code. In addition, scripting languages don't lend themselves to reusing code while with WebObjects, code reuse is the norm.

How things
really work

How does WebObjects connect to the web server?
WebObjects interfaces with standard HTTP servers using the CGI (Common Gateway Interface). WebObjects also can connect to the high performance server APIs from Netscape and Microsoft using the NSAPI or ISAPI.

How does WebObjects maintain state of the application between pages?
WebObjects includes two methods of remembering the state of the user on the server.WebObjects supports hidden-fields embedded in the HTML page as a generic solution to work with all browsers. This field is encrypted to prevent users from accessing another's state. WebObjects also supports cookies to provide a unique token to the browser for state management.

How does WebObejcts interoperate with OLE?
WebObjects applications can access OLE resources within the Windows environment. An example of this is a car loan calculator which does the calculations in Excel on the server and includes the resulting data within a standard web page. Users don't need to have Excel installed on their client system since Excel is running on the server with the web application. WebObjects can also grab information from other OLE-enabled applications such as Microsoft Access.

Can WebObjects access OLE resources on remote machines?
Yes. WebObjects includes NeXT's implementation of distributed OLE technology called D'OLE. This allows developers to access OLE data from applications running in separate address spaces on separate machines on the network. In the above example, the Excel spreadsheet calculation doesn't need to run on the same machine as the web server.

How does WebObjects access databases?
WebObjects Pro uses standard client libraries for database access. WebObjects Enterprise provides a true multi-tier model with access to Oracle, Sybase, and Informix. These databases are supported with specific database adaptors that allow developers to access data without writing SQL. Many of these adaptors ship with WebObjects Enterprise, and others are available via third parties. The database access framework within WebObjects enterprise is database independent. In fact, it's possible to generate a single web page from multiple vendors' databases.

Can WebObjects access legacy applications from a Mainframe?
Yes. NeXT has two partners, Conextions and Yrrid, who provide legacy adaptors to WebObjects Enterprise. No changes are required on the mainframe. These products access the application via 3270 connections and interactively map the information to the web application. Conextion's product also supports 5250 and VT100 sessions.

How can WebObjects scale to support high transaction rates?
A serious problem facing web application developers is the computing constraints of existing webservers. Many of these HTTP servers are overwhelmed serving up only static HTML pages. By adding business logic and database access, these machines become even slower. A competitive advantage of WebObjects is the ability to support multiple application processes running on multiple machines behind the HTTP server. NeXT includes a distributor as part of WebObjects Pro and Enterprise. NeXT's scalable architecture not only allows you to run those applications on the HTTP server, but also to split those processes out to an unlimited number of application server machines. Machines can be added and removed dynamically without restarting processes on the HTTP server.