BEA plans to show off Runner and Graffiti

New software from BEA Systems for tagging, presenting and searching enterprise data will be shown in Paris in March, company officials said Tuesday.

The company will show off the three projects, known by their code names Builder, Graffiti, and Runner, at the Documation show on March 7, said Yves Lhérault, technical director of BEA France.

Products based on the three projects will be made generally available for sale worldwide in June, said company spokeswoman Sarah Atkinson.

Graffiti will allow business users to annotate or tag information found on their intranet with descriptions of its content, source or validity. The same tool will then allow them to find information based on its tags, or on the value other users place on it.

Runner is designed to allow the rapid integration of nonportal applications into a portal infrastructure, while Builder is a tool for SOA (service-oriented architecture) systems such as BEA's Aqualogic platform, allowing users to tap into SOA data sources with relatively little programming effort.

Graffiti and Runner first appeared on BEA's road map at its BEAWorld conference in Beijing in December 2005.

Tags are a feature of Web 2.0 social bookmarking sites, such as Flickr or Deli.cio.us .

While many commentators have focused on the technology aspects of Web 2.0, such as use of AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML), the key feature for Lhérault is allowing user interaction -- within limits.

"We will give users the ability to shape their working environment, bounded by what the IT department allows," he said.

Although the products will be shown in March, and will go on sale in June, the company has still not decided whether they will be sold separately, or integrated into Aqualogic, Lhérault said.

In other news, BEA is funding the creation of a new user club in France.

Jointly chaired by BEA's Lhérault and Hubert Déchelette, systems architect at Unedic, a French unemployment insurance agency, the club is aimed at BEA software users from developers up to chief information officers.

It differs from the company's user outreach efforts in other European countries, said club coordinator Mathilde Degrave, as they are mostly focused on developers.

The club will organize at least four one-day conferences a year on technical issues, with time for users to air their grievances about products. There will be no membership fee to join the club.