The ability to meld and manage a session, rather than having separate disconnected pages, also has to be resolved to spur widespread deployment of Internet applications. This class library can be used to create online catalogs for vertical industries through a Netscape browser. The architecture recognizes which server it is running on and what type of browser is accessing it, and it can connect to various databases. Output is optimized for the browser being used. The company now sells more than 500 specialty medical supplies online to some 5,000 customers, who used to receive a catalog six times a year.
Customers can search an index of the product catalog or bypass the index and begin ordering.
A user can drill down to GIF and JPEG graphics of the items and place orders directly on the screen, using ID numbers that automatically guarantee the correct discount. PHP anticipates up to a 10 percent increase in sales due to the new service. How various application development tools will fare in the marketplace remains to be seen. The most excitement focuses on object-oriented applications that run across sites or between clients and servers, rather than using objects on an internal Web site. The winning technology is what's available and good enough to do the job, not what's conceptually elegant.