· A home page for navigation and basic information.

· A catalog for evaluating and selecting products.

· A customer database for shipping and ordering information.

· An online order form.

Each application vendor developed the first three modules on its own. Doculabs' analyst team--a group of individuals with varying business and technical backgrounds--then built the order-processing module as part of a two-day-per-product assessment process.

Through this process, the analyst team gained a thorough understanding of each product's architecture, approach and strategic direction. Drawing from hands-on experience with each product's full complement of features, the team was able to evaluate factors such as usability, administration and integration capabilities. Specific areas of focus included page design, code and logic, debugging, team development, deployment/rollout, system services, security, robustness, data access and external connections. "An in-depth analysis of the Web application development tools reviewed in this article is available from Doculabs as a technical reference set. For more information, contact Doculabs at 312-433-7793,or send E-mail to info@doculabs.com."

--Gautam Desai and Jeetu Patel
Gautam Desai is an industry analyst. Jeetu Patel is the VP of research at Doculabs (www.doculabs.com), an independent advisory firm focusing on Internet technologies, commerce technologies, knowledge management and document management.