Java in the real world

The Internet, and especially the World Wide Web, has in the last year and a half spawned more poorly-conceived advertising and half-cocked product marketing ploys than has any other medium during this century — with the possible exception of television.

There are, however, two companies that stand out for creating new marketing tools using the WWW without falling into the same trap. Using Java, CADIS Inc. and the Internet Shopping Network (ISN) each have created new ways to do business. CADIS’ Krakatoa application lets companies such as National Semiconductor publish product information over the Web and provide interactive access to up-to-date data. ISN has created a Java application designed to allow its subscribers — up to 250 of them simultaneously — to bid on goods in a real- time interactive auction.

CADIS Krakatoa simplifies part picking

CADIS Inc. was founded in 1991 to develop and market interactive search and retrieval technologies. The company’s first product, CADIS-PMX, is a search engine that can be applied to a corporation’s parts database. It uses a classification-tree hierarchy based on part attributes rather than part numbers and employs a standard classification structure designed by CADIS for mechanical and electrical parts.

With the introduction of Java, however, the model for search and retrieval of product information changed.

“In one fell swoop, Java eliminated the single biggest obstacle to new software development and implementation,” says Janet Eden-Harris, director of business development for CADIS. “True platform independence is the most important change in programming in the last 15 years.

“Before, every time you wanted a new platform to support your software, the combinations for which you had to perform regression testing grew exponentially,” explains Eden-Harris. “Using Java, all clients are supported, which means that you can do business on the Web, no matter what kind of computer your customers have sitting on their desks.”

CADIS first demonstrated the Krakatoa search engine in December of 1995 at the International World Wide Web Conference in Boston, using data from licensee National Semiconductor Corp (NSC). The integrated circuit manufacturer uses Krakatoa to offer its customers interactive access to information about 30,000 NSC products from its home page.

CADIS claims Krakatoa is the first large-scale business application built using Java. It is named for the volcanic island between Sumatra and Java whose eruption in 1883 was said to have caused a change in the world climate that lasted for several decades. To create the working prototype, CADIS developed both the client application in Java and the Java Remote Procedure Calls so that information from the NSC Web server can be viewed by clients in real time as it is updated.

Krakatoa acts as a front end to any parts database or knowledge base. In NSC’s case, the database was an Oracle database designed specifically for managing documents. When a user goes to the NSC Web site and searches the parts knowledge base, the client invokes the Krakatoa applet. Users interact with the parts knowledge base using Krakatoa in a Java runtime environment such as HotJava or Netscape 2.0. They navigate down the parts schema using parameters such as package type and price range. A series of iterative queries narrows the search until the exact part is identified.

Java is important to the Krakatoa search engine, says Eden-Harris. “Java allows the system to essentially become a true client-server database. When you build a search engine for the Web in HTML, the client has to assemble several pages before invoking the query. It’s like playing twenty questions, and having to ask all twenty before you get the answer. Then if the answer is ‘no,’ you don’t know which questions were the wrong ones.

“Java allows you to navigate down the schema in an iterative feedback mechanism that maintains current status with the server,” says Eden-Harris. “In other words, the client doesn’t have to be instructed to reconnect with the Web server each time the knowledge base is queried. It makes the search much faster.”

With Krakatoa, product designers can go to NSC’s Web site, enter product specifications according to what they need for their project, navigate the database, and then download data sheets, application notes, behavioral models, and design and simulation tools. Krakatoa gives designers and engineers direct access to current data about parts offered by their supplier any time of the day or night. Since the system is continuously updated, information about a batch or even an individual part is far more accurate and up-to-date than in a printed catalog.

NSC says its market research has shown a great deal of customer interest in this new means of delivering product information. “Our traditional [means] of delivering information has been through hard-copy data books, or through CD- ROMs…which, in our fast-paced industry, are out of date the minute they’re produced,” said Rick Brennan, manager of Web services for NSC. “By providing product data this way, our customers can get access to our data in real time, and know it’s accurate, complete, and current.” Krakatoa is designed for companies such as General Electric, Ingersoll-Rand, 3M, IBM, and National Semiconductor — CADIS customers that are in the first stages of publishing their product catalogs on the Web. The product is designed for companies that have more than 200 products, and whose product lines are expanding.

The Krakatoa product line

The Krakatoa product line consists of three software elements and various optional services:

• Krakatoa client software, written in Java, that can be downloaded and used directly from the WWW with Java-enabled browsers.
• Krakatoa server software that provides dynamic class management, query functions, logging and local storage of the knowledge base.
• A set of software development tools including a fully documented API used to build a classification schemata for the products being published. Schematas can be modified online with data fully populated using drag-and-drop commands.

Krakatoa is built using a three-tier client/server architecture. Krakatoa client software runs on local clients supported by Java; the Web server software runs on all major Unix platforms (HP, Sun, IBM, DEC). File management can be implemented on Oracle, Sybase, Informix, DB2, or the CADIS object model.

CADIS will distribute Krakatoa at no charge to clients over the Internet. Krakatoa server software will be available for commercial licensing to companies that want to implement CADIS technology to publish their product data and provide search-and-retrieval capabilities for their customers. The beta version was released on February 2; Krakatoa’s expected first customer shipment date is March 31, 1996.

Shopping on the Web

When the Internet Shopping Network (ISN) first launched its online shopping mall in April of 1994, it focused on selling computer hardware and software in an effort to match the perceived interests of Web users and utilize the Web’s capacity as a demonstration and distribution platform for software releases and upgrades. Soon the company began to realize that online retail opportunities existed outside of the high-tech market. When the billion-dollar cable television retailer, the Home Shopping Network, acquired ISN in September of 1994, ISN expanded its product line rapidly to include gourmet food, flowers, children’s merchandise, cameras, video tapes and equipment, as well as toys, games, office supplies and clothing. But ISN’s real opportunity lies not in making retail items available to consumers through yet another outlet, but in the potential to do real-time commodity trading — interactively — over the Internet, a feat that would not be possible without Java.

At the SunWorld Exposition last May, ISN demonstrated a prototype application for an online, interactive auction which it developed using the alpha release of Java. Participants bid against one another in real time for a series of classic automobiles shown on the screen. The auctioneer’s voice calls out bids and prices. A ticker tape rolls continuously across the top of the screen, showing the current bid and sale prices of each vehicle and updating in real time the bids as users enter them.

“Java makes true interactivity over the Web possible,” said Boris Putanec, Vice President of engineering for ISN. “Up to now, Web clients have been nothing more than passive observers. You could go to a Web site and see a slide show; maybe if you had enough bandwidth, see some full motion video. Java changes all that.”

The beauty of doing business over the Internet, according to Putanec, is in the real-time interaction between users. “The auction is not like a [standard HTML-based] chat room — in other words, you don’t always have to push a Reload button to update what other clients have entered. It’s a shared, community experience.”

Putanec divides retail products into two categories. First, there are the “touch-and-feel” products such as clothing or cars where the purchaser must have a good tactile and visual sense of a product before buying it. Then there are commodity products such as heavy equipment, airplanes or “….the 10,000 hard disks that someone wants to unload to the highest bidder.” The former category, as Putanec sees it, is not as well suited to online shopping; the latter is a natural for the Internet.

“Auctions, the big ones, are a pain in the ass,” says Putanec. “They’re held somewhere that’s inevitably hard to get to. You have to go there yourself, or you have to rely on an agent to do your bidding for you. Then there are ‘blind auctions’ where all bids are placed in advance.” The virtue of the online real-time auction, says Putanec, is that it takes place in the on-demand real-time world thus liberating participants from having to be present at a physical location.

In addition to its efficiency, the online auction entertains. Since users can “chat” in real time with the auctioneer and with each other, the online auction recreates some of the intimacy of the old-fashioned local auction — where everyone knew everyone else, especially the person whose equipment or estate was on the block. The online auction opens this world to anyone who wants to take a look. WWW cruisers can watch the event like a game show if they have no interest in bidding on 10,000 hard disks or on a pre-owned 10-ton excavator, or can participate at any time by entering a bid.

Products that Putanec sees as potentially more difficult to sell via the online auction are high-end retail items such as fine art and estate pieces auctioned at Sotheby’s or Christie’s. “It’s difficult to create an emotional space on the Web,” he says. People have a different way of responding to those kinds of commodities. You just can’t sell them in the same way.” Putanec does not see this current disposition as an insurmountable obstacle, however. Eventually, he believes, people will be comfortable enough with the Web that the high-end sort of commerce will start to take place.

There are, of course, legal and practical considerations to selling merchandise through an on line auction. To be an auctioneer — online or off-line — one has to be licensed, and, of course, each state requires its own license. “To do this in reality,” Putanec says, “we will have to be licensed and bonded in all 50 states. Fortunately, we’re big enough to do this through our parent company, the Home Shopping Network.” As for international sales, Putanec feels that they will have to wait until the infrastructure for international commerce over the Internet evolves, and a few more of the issues around satisfying governments, import taxes, and tariffs have been identified and ironed out. For the time being, ISN plans auctions only in the US.

Although ISN has yet to market the online auction program as a commercially-available product, both Putanec, and Bill Rollinson, the ISN VP of Marketing believe it’s only a matter of time. “We’re looking for the right partner,” Putanec says. “We need someone to come along with the right product line and then market what we can do to those people.”