GigaSpaces Adds Spring Support

NEW YORK—Grid computing vendor GigaSpaces Technologies will release its 6.0 application server on June 25, which will include support for the open-source application framework known as Spring, vendor officials tell DWT.

With the Spring support, developers do not need to write their code in a complex and rigid way, says Geva Perry, chief marketing officer with GigaSpaces.

In earlier versions of the platform, the processing unit was not built into the product and required some manual coding by developers, he says. "With 6.0, developers can now write their codes as plain old Java objects, .Net or C++ and the platform handles the distribution."

In the Spring environment, all interactions with the underlying execution environment are done through configuration files outside the code, says Perry. "You can write and test your application on your laptop and then simply move to a clustered environment."

The vendor selected the Spring environment because of its high level of documentation as well as to prevent vendor lock-in, says Perry.

The new release, which targets brokers, banks and exchanges, runs in Microsoft Windows, Unix and Linux operating environments and can also operate in a standalone or grid mode, he says.

"The coming generation of front-office applications needs to offer low latency to attend the extremely fast transactions. At the same time, they need to be highly scalable, as the market is constantly growing and customers want to adapt to it without having to change their applications," says Perry.

The new release provides an integrated solution, delivering the messaging, data and business logic management services required for every computing environment, using a single, common core, Space-based architecture, says Perry.

"We have created a container that takes that package, which consists of your data, business project and message, and transforms it in to a single format and scales it out to meet any kind of requirement you may have," he explains.

By delivering this in a single package, it eliminates the need to deploy separate solutions for data caching, application serving to handle business logic and messaging services on their own servers, says Perry "By having three physically separate servers, you get a lot of latency. It is also difficult to scale and you lose performance."

The platform has been tested by GigaSpaces internally and also by some undisclosed external customers, says Perry. GigaSpaces expects to receive more feedback on the new platform this month, when early versions will be available for download from the company's Web site.