Now at a pre-launch stage, Wakanda is billed as a unified environment based on JavaScript. “This is a development platform that is truly JavaScript on all sides,” said Laurent Ribardiere, president, founder and CTO of 4D. “When you [develop] an application, you do everything in JavaScript.”
Wakanda is due for general availability by the end of this year, preceded by a beta release program. The platform features Wakanda Server, which is a faceless HTTP server with a datastore and datastore engine; Wakanda Studio, featuring a visual datastore and front-end design tools and a code editor; and Wakanda Framework, with widgets and standards-based data sources feeding them.
Developers can author applications like data-driven Web applications or medical applications. Applications are drawn in HTML for access via either a desktop browser or a mobile browser. The server component of Wakanda runs on Linux, Mac, or Windows. Wakanda, Ribardiere said, offers benefits in ease of use: Developers do not have to deal with the complexity of platforms like Microsoft’s .Net, Java, or other JavaScript technologies.
The pre-launch version of Wakanda is available at the company Web site. Wakanda will be offered via a dual license structure, with developers able to access either an open source version or a subscription-based commercially licensed version. The commercial product will feature support services. The name Wakanda was derived from a Sioux term for “inner magic,” 4D said on its website.