Elemental Software Ships Drumbeat 2000

Business Wire, Jan 14, 1999

CARLSBAD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 14, 1999--

Third Major Release of Award-Winning Web Development Product

Adds Major Enhancements for Building Web Interfaces to

Databases and Applications

Elemental Software today announced and shipped Drumbeat 2000, the third major release of its flagship Web development product.

Created specifically to meet the requirements of developers building sophisticated, data-driven Web applications, Drumbeat 2000 is the fastest, easiest way for developers to build Web interfaces for applications and databases. Drumbeat 2000 employs a visual drag-and-drop interface and offers sophisticated application Wizards to reduce the time and skill required to build dynamic Web sites.

With Drumbeat 2000, visually engaging Web applications that work across all major browsers can be built without hand coding. Drumbeat 2000 includes major enhancements over Drumbeat 2.0, released in June 1998, to simplify the development of powerful Web interfaces: These include an expanded DataForm Wizard; Point-and-Click Interactions support for server-side COM and ASP objects; VBScript support; and additional prebuilt dynamic application templates.

Drumbeat 2000, which lists for $399, is available through March at a special introductory estimated street price of $249 from the Elemental Software Web site at www.drumbeat.com and major resellers.

"Rapid deployment of Web applications is a business imperative," said Peter Hirshberg, president and CEO of Elemental Software. "Web applications are approachable, cross-platform and can be deployed without maintenance problems or configuration headaches. There is no faster or easier way to build powerful Web interfaces to database and applications than with Drumbeat 2000."

Drumbeat 2000 automatically generates code for Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP) enabling applications to run on standard Microsoft Web servers and eliminating the need to purchase expensive proprietary application servers.

Drumbeat 2000 was designed for Web developers who need to speed the deployment of departmental-level, data-driven Web applications that access and update data in real time. Developers use Drumbeat to expand the reach and value of existing databases and client-server applications; to add new database-driven functionality to existing Web sites; or to develop new data-driven applications for the Web.

"The value to users from a Web User Interface (WUI) is its ability to integrate multiple information sources into a familiar, content-centric interface," said Mike Gotta, program director of Workgroup Computing Strategies at META Group.

"However, web systems are becoming more complex. Authors and developers are moving away from hand-crafting pages and increasingly will assemble pages from pre-defined components. We believe tools such as Elemental Software's Drumbeat 2000 exemplify an emerging category of tools that enable application developers to construct rule-based components to be used by other users to create rich user interfaces."

Drumbeat 2000 Features

Drumbeat 2000 builds upon industry-leading Drumbeat 2.0 capabilities such as Point-and-Click Interactions, DataForm Wizard, Layout Inheritance and Smart Pages to offer greater depth for building Web interfaces to applications and databases. New features include:

Enhanced DataForm Wizard now allows developers to create Web pages -- without writing code -- that automatically include dropdown lists, list boxes, edit boxes, radio buttons, check boxes, sliders and more than 20 other UI elements to browse, search, view and update databases. Beyond simple queries, the Drumbeat SQL Wizard now takes advantage of stored procedures, views and parameterized queries. A new DataLoop element displays multiple detail records per page.

Point and Click Interactions Support for ASP and COM enables Drumbeat developers to create Web pages that access and update server-side applications without hand-coding. The new Interactions Center includes hundreds of new Point-and-Click interactions to simplify building Web applications with database access and filtering, password protection, profile-based access, data validation and state management. Beyond ASP and COM objects, Drumbeat 2000 offers drag-and-drop support for all Microsoft Visual InterDev 6.0 Design Time Controls.

VBScript Support is offered in Drumbeat 2000 as an alternative for creating server-side interactions. Many advanced users prefer VBScript to JavaScript, which is also supported.

Starting Points and DrumNotes are pre-built application templates that can easily be modified to meet a customer's own requirements. Starting Points bundled with Drumbeat 2000 include dynamic applications for employee directory, corporate intranet, asset management, guest book and visitor registration. DrumNotes provide pre-built examples and how-to documentation for the most-requested application functionality and techniques including using cookies, email form data using ASP components, creating multi-page forms and validating data entry.