What is "servoy"

Servoy is a development and deployment platform for enterprise applications, written itself in Java, and which uses JavaScript as its development language. It can adopt the native look and feel of any platform or the web, using HTML and CSS code. Servoy was created from the start to make business application development easy. It has introduced many innovations for that purpose: the use of JavaScript instead of Java, a comprehensive development framework with building blocks that are added through drag and drop, a web client, etc.

Servoy was inspired by 4GLs in terms of how applications are developed but unlike many 4GLs, it does not use proprietary languages and/or databases, being based instead on open standards. Servoy consists of a GUI designer, is event-driven and runs scripts through JavaScript. Servoy allows applications to be deployed on a native Smart client ( Rich client) and on a pure HTML Web client from the same codebase and user interface forms.

Servoy 4.0 and beyond offers a free community edition for non-commercial use, which can be downloaded from the company's website.

Servoy applications can be deployed on all popular operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris and other UNIX systems. eWeek and MacUser Magazine gave Servoy a 4 mouse rating.

Applications developed with Servoy can access data from all popular SQL back-ends such as PostgreSQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, IBM Informix, Sybase, MySQL and Firebird, and combine data from different databases into a single user interface.

The Servoy suite of products consists of:

• The Servoy Developer, used to build applications by creating user interface forms and connecting their elements to JavaScript code. This is done within the Eclipse IDE (integrated development environment.)
• The Servoy Application Server, used to deploy the application and to communicate with a connected database
• The Servoy Smart Client and Web Client, which run on the end user's device (workstations, computers, tablets or smartphones)

Servoy also offers a runtime version that allows the creation of standalone Servoy applications.

The Servoy Application Server includes the Servoy Headless Client. This client allows other applications to execute Servoy business rules including using them as a web service. The headless client also allows batch processing and scheduled tasks.

Servoy has a partnering network of about 200 companies—the Servoy Alliance Network (SAN)—that offer Servoy development, Servoy components ( Beans and plugins), consulting or hosting services.