_posts/2010-07-14-foundation115.markdown

---
layout: post
title: 'The ASF Asks: Have you met Apache Pivot?'
date: '2010-07-14T12:59:59+00:00'
categories: foundation
---
<div>The all-volunteer Apache Software Foundation (ASF) develops, stewards, and incubates nearly 150 Open Source projects and initiatives, many of which power mission-critical applications in financial services, aerospace, publishing, government, healthcare, research, infrastructure, and more.</div> 
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  <div>Did you know that 50% of the Top 10 downloaded Open Source products are Apache projects?</div> 
  <div>Did you know that most Enterprise Java solutions are built using Apache?&nbsp;</div> 
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  <div>We are pleased to showcase Apache Pivot, the full-featured, professional-grade Java development platform for Rich Internet Applications (RIAs).</div> 
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  <div><b>Quick peek:</b> RIAs are distributed Web applications that are delivered via site-specific browsers, plug-ins, sandboxes, or virtual machines. Apache Pivot provides a foundation upon which sophisticated and engaging applications can be easily built and deployed over the Web. Pivot combines the enhanced productivity and usability features of a modern RIA toolkit with the robustness of the industry-standard Java platform, leveraging its comprehensive feature set and extensive industry support.</div> 
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  <div><b>Background:</b> initially developed at VMWare, Pivot was accepted into the Apache Incubator in January 2009 and graduated as an Apache Top-Level Project in December 2009.</div> 
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  <div><b>Why Pivot:</b> &nbsp;Like other RIA platforms, Pivot includes features that make building modern GUI applications easier, including:</div> 
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  <div>- An XML-based markup language for declaring the structure of a user interface</div> 
  <div>- Stylable themes (aka &quot;skins&quot;)</div> 
  <div>- Data binding</div> 
  <div>- Animated effects and transitions</div> 
  <div>- Web Services integration</div> 
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  <div>Pivot is the only RIA framework that allows developers to build applications for the Java plugin using Java or any other JVM-compatible language, such as JavaScript, Groovy, or Scala. Pivot is also the only truly open RIA framework: it is completely Open Source, and is driven entirely by the software development community.</div> 
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  <div>Pivot allows developers to build applications using languages, tools, and APIs they already know, reducing technology sprawl and streamlining solution techonlogy stacks.</div> 
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  <div><b>What's under the hood:</b> Pivot 1.5 improves the overall application development experience through</div> 
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    <ul> 
      <li>Expanded Data binding across a much larger collection of components and properties, as well as BindType enum to allow a caller to control the bind direction (load, store, or both).<br /><br /></li> 
      <li>New Pub/Sub (publish/subscribe) API to facilitate decoupled messaging within a Pivot application.<br /><br /></li> 
      <li>New SuggestionPopup component to simplify the task of adding &quot;auto-complete&quot; or &quot;lookup&quot; functionality to a TextInput and to provide &quot;combo box&quot;-like behavior in an application.<br /><br /></li> 
      <li>Overhauled Form improvements, including more prominent flagged fields and flag icons more consistent with the overall Pivot look and feel.<br /><br /></li> 
      <li>Improved Text rendering by Pivot components to be consistent with natively rendered text.<br /><br /></li> 
      <li>Improved Bindable interface that simplifies WTKX and Java code integration, including a Resources argument to the initialize() method to provide the caller with access to the resource bundle used to load the WTKX file.<br /><br /></li> 
      <li>Enhanced look and feel such as tab and Push button-like components (PushButton, ListButton, CalendarButton, etc.) with slightly rounded corners and bevel consistency.<br /><br /></li> 
      <li>Streamlined QueryServlet API which is more consistent with Web query client API, making it easier to write Pivot applications that provide and take advantage of REST-based Web Services.<br /><br /></li> 
      <li>New ResultList class (org.apache.pivot.sql.ResultList) added to simplify the task of returning JDBC result data from a Web query, and to transform SQL a result set into a JSON or CSV response without the need for any intermediary transformation (the data is transformed on the fly as it is read from the database).<br /><br /></li> 
      <li>New FileSerializer to simplify the task of writing file upload applications in Pivot.</li> 
    </ul> 
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  <div><b>Latest release:</b> Apache Pivot 1.5 on 4 June 2010 under the Apache License v.2.0.</div> 
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    <p><b>Downloads, documentation, examples, and more information:</b> visit http://pivot.apache.org/ .</p> 
    <p><b># # #</b> </p> 
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