DIGG IT! I have been working with several Versata products lately. In short, it has completely altered my perspective of server-side development.
Versata uses business rules as a development metaphor. A developer writes rules and generates software from these rules. Change a rule and all dependent software changes. Within larger applications, this allows you to change very complex systems very quickly.
The theory behind Versata products is that duplication/embedding of a business rule into software reduces software quality and eliminates reversibility (undoing what is done). As we write software, we embed rules in hundreds if not thousands of places. Even worse is the fact that we often duplicate common rules across several applications. When rules are extracted from software, they can be effectively shared like a component. The real key in Versata is that you can replace 90% of the software we write with simple well organized rules.
Take following rules for an HR application as an example:
Employee has ssn, name, salary, age, hireDate, phone, address, sickLeave, vacation
Employee.overTimeSalary equals Employee.salary*2
Employees are Payed every 2 weeks
Managers can Add and Remove Employees
Employees get 2 weeks SickLeave per Annum
Employees get 2 weeks Vacation per Annum
These rules could be used to broker database updates, web services, and UIs in a multitude of applications. Although similar to OOP, rules are more flexible as you can defined relationships between classes on a transaction basis without changing the classes. Essentially the class is oblivious to the rules in use and when a method is called, the arguments can be manipulated by rules prior to the methods execution. In short, it allows for very simple classes and database tables.
Having used the toolset, Versata would be an excellent addition to the Macromedia toolset. Plus Versata (VATA) has a 12M MarketCap, 16M in cash and positive cash flow. That is quite cheap considering the technology is nothing short of excellent.
Cheers,
ted ;)
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