Calendaring company exploits Web services
What's fascinating about Journyx is its strategic use of Web services to support its mission.

by Cameron Laird, developer, PhaseIt Inc. Intel Corp.

Web Services (WS) is a winner. More precisely, the conclusion to which Productive Programming returns each month is that developers using WS are winning. Sure, plenty of pundits continue to debate WS' future adoption—while it's already going into successful production for fast-moving organizations.

Earlier in the year, the column emphasized WS' role in projects internal to an organization, and what Intel Corporation's Chief e-Strategist >Christopher Thomas calls the messaging architecture for WS deployment. This summer has seen a new cohort of WS applications blossom, though. For the most part, they share these characteristics:

  • WS is becoming mundane. These companies aren't advertising miraculous breakthroughs; they're just delivering solid value to customers. WS plays a part, but only a part.
  • At a technical level, they exploit WS remote procedure calls (RPC) as well-standardized, platform-neutral interfaces to promote development of rich clients.
  • WS is publicly visible. This isn't about massive internal return-on-investment projects hidden from competitive view, or even extranets restricted to a few favored partners. For these companies, one of WS's benefits is that it's a good way for parties who are not close to communicate across organizational boundaries.
Among the products in this category are Journyx, Inc.'s Timesheet and Timecard.

Making connections
Journyx might seem an unlikely home for technical innovation. It's a tiny company, with only a handful of employees, and no venture-capital backing. It specializes in activity recording, an ancient segment, already automated even before the computer era. Timecard programs are needed so universally and are so easy to write that most working programmers have turned out at least one during their careers.


Web version of an application

Figure 1. Journyx, Inc.'s TimeSheet Application, Web Version (click images to enlarge)

To engineer a collaborative version, though, with proper security and performance, careful observance of calendar peculiarities, integration with other applications such as Quickbooks and Project, and rich reporting functions, is more of a challenge. Journyx has done well enough at that challenge to celebrate its fifth year of self-financed growth.

If you're interested in this topic, these articles may be helpful:

Platform 2015: Intel ® Platform Evolution for the Next Decade
Over the next 10 years, new workloads and usage models will put enormo...
WebSphere MQ V7.0 free trial download
The latest trial version of WebSphere MQ V7.0 is available for free fr...
Architecting rich-client Web services
by Sandip H. Mandera, staff technical marketing engineer, Intel Corp. ...
Download: Rational Systems Developer
Formally called Rational Rose, IBM Rational Systems Developer V6 is a ...
Next-Generation Embedded Internet Being Built by Users
Embedded systems have always been about putting compute power where th...

Related Jobs:

Director, Systems Administration #1760 - TX - Irving - Michaels Stores, Inc.
Position Summary Basic Function: Leads the support effort for al...
WebSphere Administrator #3004 - MD - Sparks - Vision Technology
tor - WebSphere Administrator Position Description We are currentl...
Programmer/Software Engineer #56092 - MA - Waltham - Autodesk, Inc.
Requirements General Summary: Work with Autodesk Revit develo...
Senior Manager, GSI Technology #TEC00001301 - DC - Washington - The Thomson Corporation
Senior Manager, GSI Technology – TEC00001301 Job Descripti...
Software Security Engineer - CA - Palo Alto - Fortify Software
Fortify is a fast-paced startup focused on solving the software securi...
Software Development Engineer #132449 - WA - Redmond - Microsoft Corporation
Are you passionate in using machine learning and data mining to solve ...
Tech Yahoo, Software Dev Eng, Sr #RX1000022541 - CA - Sunnyvale - Yahoo! Inc.
Tech Yahoo, Software Dev Eng, Sr Job No. RX1000022541 Location ...
Programming Writer #132580 - WA - Redmond - Microsoft Corporation
The Windows Client SDK team is looking for an experienced Programming ...
Senior Software Engineer, Content Match #RX1000015841 - CA - Burbank - Yahoo! Inc.
Senior Software Engineer, Content Match Job No. RX1000015841 Lo...
Web Developer #23477 - MD - Baltimore - Morgan Stanley
Web Developer Date Posted: 8/1/2007 Functional Area: Informat...