IBM alphaWorks milestone features weather forecast demo

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of its alphaWorks Web site for experimental technologies, IBM on Monday will begin hosting projects including a precision weather-forecasting application and two offerings for developers.

Being offered via a new effort called alphaWorks Services, the projects stray from the previous format in which users have been able to download prototype technologies. This time around, IBM is offering what amounts to hosted online applications, Chris Spencer, emerging technology strategist at IBM alphaWorks, said. The alphaWorks Services platform leverages the software-as-a-service delivery model, IBM said.

One project, Deep Thunder, provides high-resolution, localized weather forecasts for businesses, down to the hour and specific square mile. “We actually have two meteorologists who are on staff and this [effort] is out of IBM Research, Spencer said.

With Deep Thunder, a business could learn if snow is falling in an area or what the weather is like at a manufacturing center. Or, a transportation department could find out which streets need plowing.

Although Deep Thunder sounds suspiciously like an application rather than middleware, a development tool, or a platform, Spencer would not characterize it as an application. IBM says it isn’t in the applications business.

“What we’re offering here is a prototype of an idea,” Spencer said. “I would not say this is an application.”

An IBM representative later described Deep Thunder as a demo. An industry analyst agreed with IBM’s assessment that Deep Thunder does not move Big Blue into the application business.

“I think of Deep Thunder more as a great demonstration of both making the results of a high computational problem available — most of us don’t have that much computing power available — and then using mashup-type technology to interface it to a Web-based application,” said Amy Wohl, editor of the Amy Wohl’s Opinions newsletter, in an e-mail response to question. “I don’t think IBM is going into the weather forecasting business but you have to use some application to show how this sort of thing works.

“I’m fairly sure that IBM intends to stay in the middleware and infrastructure part of the software business and leave the applications to their partners,” Wohl said.

The other hosted projects include ADIEU (Ad Hoc Development and Integration tool for End Users), which is a collaborative online environment for developing Web services, and Web Relational Blocks (WebRB), providing a GUI to construct front-end Web applications from back-end databases.

ADIEU, available as either a download or a hosted service, features a card-based programming paradigm, in which each card contains specific programming functionality. Offering a simplified way to build applications, ADIEU is similar to Apple’s HyperCard concept, Spencer said.

“I love the idea of ADIEU — that someone can write an application in a few hours or less,” Wohl said. “[It] sounds like a great idea for prototyping or for small needs where big investments or long waits couldn’t be justified.”

WebRB features a GUI for nonprogrammers to build applications. “What’s kind of nice is they don’t have to understand the database schema,” or the details of the database, said Spencer. The project uses technology such as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and Cascading Style Sheets in a hosted environment. Components are dragged and dropped onto a canvas.

It remains to be seen whether the three projects become official IBM products. Since its formation in 1996, alphaWorks has released 700 technologies to early adopters and contributed 30 technologies to the open source community, Spencer said. Open source technologies have include the Jikes Java compiler and the Xerces XML parser.

One project originating on alphaWorks, the Servlet Express Engine, later formed the basis for the IBM WebSphere application server. All told, about 250 alphaWorks projects became products or product extensions for IBM.

“It’s evidence of the community having an influence on IBM,” Spencer said.

The alphaWorks site attracts about 165,000 unique visitors per month, Spencer said. “We have everything from developers to executives and they represent anything from Fortune 100 companies to SMBs (small and medium-size businesses),” said Spencer.