Hi! I've been quiet for a while on this list, but I still read it religiously. I wanted to take a second and share our announcement of the release of the second beta of the Avacet Application Engine. Version 2.0b2 of the Avacet Application Engine is available for download at http://www.avacet.com. The Avacet software suite consists of two main parts. The first is a language-neutral definition of data and interfaces for exchanging data, and the second is a reference implementation of an application engine that implements the Avacet framework and client libraries. It is suitable for the development of custom enterprise applications that require a high degree of scalability, reliability, and interoperability. The second beta release of the Avacet Application Engine adds a language-independent definition format for module interfaces, offers XML/RPC over HTTP, new HOWTO documentation geared toward new users, and many other enhancements. This is the last beta before version 2.0 of the Avacet Application Engine Perhaps more so than other application platforms, the Avacet engine is targeted toward building enterprise quality applications in a Perl and Apache/mod_perl environment. The Avacet framework itself is a language-neutral and open standard for describing data and protocols for data exchange. Because the definition is not represented in a particular programming language, we are able to implement client libraries in multiple languages (such as Perl) that can share common middle-tier business logic. I fundamentally believe that Perl, when written well, can be an enterprise ready programming language, and that Apache/mod_perl is one of the best environments (if not the best) for building web applications. To that end, we have built a feature rich set of modules that ease the development of mod_perl applications. The Avacet Perl libraries offer a ModPerlApplication base class, as well as a Service object model for dynamic templates (using HTML::Embperl), XML based configuration, memory and file system based object caching, an "exception" model for Perl, among many other features. I'm announcing this on the mod_perl list because I hope that our code offers value to engineers doing mod_perl development. We are using the Avacet engine and the Perl modules for our own e-commerce application suite. By taking advantage of the Avacet framework, business logic can be shared between custom mod_perl apps, those we develop at Avacet, and those developed at large by the community. We have mailing lists set up at the Avacet site, and I invite people to join us at the avacet-developers list. I'd be happy to set up an avacet-perl list if the mod_perl community finds these libraries to be useful. You are all invited to check out the second avacet beta at http://www.avacet.com. I look forward to hearing your feedback! Best regards, -DeWitt