Tibco GI (General Interface) is a small little tool for building RIA.
The most amazing part of TIBCO GI is that it provides a fine IDE. And the IDE itself is built on the same framework. You don’t need any installer to run the IDE except a standard browser. And yes, ANY browser. I have tested with IE and Firefox and it runs smooth!
I have used Flash, I have used Ajax, I have used Flex, I have used Laszlo.. I like them all but I like this GI a lot! I always say : Rich User Interface = Rich User Experience! And TIBCO GI is quite satisfactory in that.

I would like to mention some cool things you can do with TIBCO GI:

- Integrate it with all major J2EE Frameworks: Struts 1.1, 2.0, Spring etc etc….
Links for some tutorials:
http://ajaxian.com/archives/ajax-crud-with-struts-2-and-tibco-gi
http://www.adtmag.com/blogs/blog.aspx?a=19387

- Javascript based: Runs on browser, no other downloads required.

- One page application: Just like flex, Single Page Application.

- Drag and Drop IDE: Just like flex builder, Drag and Drop Components and do lots of stuff with them. What’s more, remember the old days with VB6, It provides an IDE just like VB!

- Javascript: Organize all your business logic in Javascript. Add javascript functions and just call them from component’s events. Yes, the components have events and they can call other javascript functions or directly write code into that.

- Java Like API: If you download and goto the help section, You’ll see all the API’s are well structured Java Classes. Very well documented.

- COOL TOOLS: I must say some really really cool tools: Everyone knows how difficult it is to debug javascript(Until firefox came out with an Error Console) . TIBCO GI provides a small window where you can paste your JavaScript code and it can run it for you! No need to write functions! I use this for checking some external JavaScripts too!

- Error console. Before you actually deploy your application, the IDE checks all the javascript errors for you and lists them out.

- Another cool tool: XML Mapping. TIBCO GI has thought for Web 3.0. When websites become webservices. Expose all your business logic on webservice and call them by a WSDL. You can drag and drop your components to say what’s gonna be your input and what’s gonna be your output. You really gotta try this!!!

- Integrates quite well with All other TiBCO Products like TIbco Businessworks, Iprocess etc.

- Charting: Add in components provide a bundled set of charting tools. You will really like it if you’re into charting. It can give tough competition to FLEX Charting!

- The TibCO framework size is just around 350 KB. Bye bye dial up users. Web 2.0 is not for you!

- Lastly, TIBCO is open souce. I love open source. I have been into open source for quite sometime and something like this is really a boon for RIA World.