NetDynamics Application Server was an early Java-based integrated

software platform A computing platform, digital platform, or software platform is the infrastructure on which software is executed. While the individual components of a computing platform may be obfuscated under layers of abstraction, the ''summation of the requi ...

. The product was developed by NetDynamics, a

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

start-up company founded in 1995 by Zack Rinat and Ofer Ben-Shachar. Unlike other early

application server An application server is a server that hosts applications or software that delivers a business application through a communication protocol. For a typical web application, the application server sits behind the web servers. An application ser ...

competitors, NetDynamics chose

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

as the development language for the platform. As Java became the dominant development language for web-based applications, NetDynamics experienced significant revenue growth in 1997 and 1998. However, the product soon encountered problems due to the relative immaturity of Java and the rush to release new product versions in a rapidly changing marketplace. Believing that the new

JDBC Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) is an application programming interface (API) for the Java (programming language), Java programming language which defines how a client may access a database. It is a Java-based data access technology used for Java ...

API was too immature, NetDynamics created a proprietary database development API based on a product from

Rogue Wave Software Rogue Wave Software was an American software development company based in Louisville, Colorado. It provided cross-platform software development tools and embedded components for parallel, data-intensive, and other high-performance computing (HPC ...

. NetDynamics, Inc. was acquired by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

in July 1998.Sun Buys NetDynamics
/ref> The application server software, together with the Netscape Application Server, was the basis for Sun's iPlanet Application Server offering.

Competition

NetDynamics initially competed against Bluestone, an application server based on the

C Programming Language C (''pronounced'' '' – like the letter c'') is a general-purpose programming language. It was created in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie and remains very widely used and influential. By design, C's features cleanly reflect the capabilities of ...

, and the

Kiva A kiva (also ''estufa'') is a space used by Puebloans for rites and political meetings, many of them associated with the kachina belief system. Among the modern Hopi and most other Pueblo peoples, "kiva" means a large room that is circula ...

application server. By mid-1998, a new competitor, WebLogic, Inc., released a Java application server that was compliant with

and another emerging standard, JavaBeans. WebLogic Application Server eventually won out in the marketplace. The explosive growth of the application server business caught the attention of larger information technology companies. By 1998, the early application server start-up companies were all acquired:

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

purchased Bluestone,

acquired NetDynamics,

Netscape Communications Corporation Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape (web browser), Nets ...

bought out Kiva, and Weblogic was acquired by

BEA Systems BEA Systems, Inc. was a company that specialized in enterprise infrastructure software products, which was wholly acquired by Oracle Corporation on April 29, 2008. History BEA began as a software company, founded in 1995 and headquartered in ...

. Only Weblogic continues to survive as a product;

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational computer technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Co-founded in 1977 in Santa Clara, California, by Larry Ellison, who remains executive chairman, Oracle was ...

acquired BEA in 2008, and the product was renamed Oracle Weblogic.

References

Sun Microsystems software Web server software {{Network-software-stub

Competition

See also

References