Aestiva LLC has introduced its H2O programming language, which it says helps develop browser-based applications easier than alternatives like ASP.NET, JSP and PHP. H2O — which stands for “HTML with HTML/OS Overlays,” is based on Aestiva’s own HTML/OS database engine.
The company describes H2O as “similar to BASIC,” and said that developers familiar with Perl, Visual Basic, ASP or PHP should be able to use H2O with relatively few problems. It works on Unix operating systems including Mac OS X, Linux and Windows.
Functionality supported by the language includes XML data manipulation, text, e-mail, Web form, 4GL database and array processing, and compression and encryption.
H2O is available through Web hosting providers linked on Aestiva’s Web site. It’s also available for download from Aestiva’s Web site, if you wish to run it locally on your own system.