Lightstreamer is a push/streaming engine that delivers real-time textual data both to Web browsers and desktop applications. When using browsers as a client, only HTML/JavaScript is used, but while the classic AJAX approach is based on polling to retrieve new data, Lightstreamer implements a "streaming AJAX" paradigm.

Milan. Lightstreamer is a push engine for live data distribution. It streams real-time data to an HTML browser without the need to download or install anything on the client, updating the changed data on the display without reloads. It can also enliven any thick client application with streaming data through client APIs.

While the classic AJAX approach is based on polling to retrieve new data, Lightstreamer implements a "streaming AJAX" paradigm, because the updates are pushed by the server in an asynchronous fashion.

"Lightstreamer, dating back five years ago, anticipated the current trend in technology where sophisticated Web clients are developed in pure HTML and JavaScript without renouncing high interactivity and usability" said Alessandro Alinone, CTO of Lightstreamer. "Now Lightstreamer pushes the AJAX paradigm to the extreme by introducing streaming AJAX."

A new StreamSense feature has been introduced for scenarios where a network infrastructure blocks any form of streaming to the client. With StreamSense each Lightstreamer Web Client can automatically detect if the streaming mode is unsupported and then switch to the Smart Polling mode. In this case (and only for those individual clients) periodic updating is used with a highly optimized AJAX-like approach.

Lightstreamer Server implements several mechanisms to optimize the data transmission on heterogeneous networks. It is possible to allocate a maximum bandwidth for each streaming channel, along with the use of Adaptive Streaming that detects any network congestion in order to dynamically throttle the data.

Lightstreamer is currently used by banks and financial platform providers to deliver real-time market data to any type of client and many other applications are under development.

About Lightstreamer
Lightstreamer (www.lightstreamer.com) was originally developed by the Financial Systems Integration activity of privately held Par-Tec SpA group (founded in 1998). In 2004, Weswit, a separate company was formed within the group as an ‘ISV’ to provide Lightstreamer 'Push' middleware solutions for streaming real-time Market Data, or any live information, to web browsers and custom application clients. Lightstreamer is compatible with most major and minor browsers on the market, such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Netscape, Safari etc.