1. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Simplified Web Application Development Shayne R Flint Department of Computer Science Australian National University

2. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Outline Background Existing approaches to Web development Requirements, Constraints and Design Implementation Testing Availability Future Work

3. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Background Capability Dynamics research Decision Control Process Capability Dynamics Models Tool Support

4. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Capability Dynamics Model manipulation Process Monitoring Agent based simulations Groupware Decision Control Process Capability Dynamics Models Tool Support (Web Applications) Internet /Intranet

5. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Existing Approaches to Web Development Various Combinations of HTTP HTML, DHTML, XHTML, XML etc. Client Side scripts (JavaScript etc.) Server Side scripts (PHP etc.) JSP, ASP XUL.NET, SOAP

6. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Existing Approaches to Web Development Does this make sense for web application development? Complexity, life cycle cost

7. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Armidale is mainly about Abstraction So is Bullant (http://www.bullant.com.au) Droplets (http://www.droplets.com)http://www.droplets.com armidale goes further Architecture is abstracted away From developer AND user

8. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Requirements, Constraints and Design

9. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Open Source Design Constraint Armidale shall be an open source project Design Technologies that would allow armidale to be made open source were used BSD License Hosted on SourceForge.net (http://sourceforge.net/projects/armidale)

10. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Simplified Application Development Requirements Simple programming model Qualitative measurement required! Single programming language Stand-alone and Thin-Client/Server architecture support

11. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Simplified Application Development Design No HTML, Scripts, browsers etc. Applications are written in Java as if they were stand-alone programs. No concern for where applications run No concern for internet/networking issues Complexity is abstracted away from developer

12. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Abstraction – developer view Armidale Application Std. Non-GUI APIs Database Data structures Maths Etc. Armidale GUI API Factories Local Client/Server Other… Implementations Execution Control Platform Distribution Appearance etc. API Implementations

13. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Rich Graphical User Interfaces Requirements: Rich set of GUI elements (buttons, icons, lists, tables, tree views etc.) Same look and feel as normal desktop applications Same look and feel when running stand-alone or on server Design Similar set of widgets to that provided by Java Swing Platform implementations use real Swing widgets Metal, Motif, Windows, MacOS X look and feel

14. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Rich Graphical User Interfaces

15. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Rich Graphical User Interfaces

16. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Starting Applications Requirements Application shall be started like any other desktop application An application launcher shall be provided Design Applications that run stand-alone or on remote servers can be started in the following ways The armidale launcher Command Line Desktop Icon ‘Start’ menu

17. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Starting Applications

18. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Platform Independence Design Constraint Armidale applications and the Armidale server shall run on the following platforms: Linux (intel) Solaris(Sparc) MacOS X (powerPC) Windows 2000 (intel) Design Use Java!!

19. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Extensibility Requirement Developers shall be able to add new widgets Design The code for armidale widgets is generated from an XML widget specification Hand coding is only required for low level platform specific bits (eg. Using Jbutton to implement and Armidale PushButton)

20. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Extensibility Hand coding

21. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Launcher Platforms Design Constraint Provision to run the Armidale Launcher on PDAs and Mobile Phones Design The widget code generator can generate code for different of platforms Only Swing platform implemented at present Code for other platforms can be generated now, but needs the hand coding for the low level platform specific bits.

22. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Network Bandwidth Performance Requirement Armidale shall minimise bandwidth usage To ensure optimal performance when using PDAs and Mobile Phones. Design Open Binary Message Protocol No HTML, XML, etc. Image Handling Large Data Structures

23. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Implementation Uneventful using solid tools SuSE Linux Sun Microsystems JDK 1.3 and 1.4 Standard Edition Apache Ant - Java build tool Jedit – Java Editor, partial IDE No problems due to tools or OS.

24. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Functional Testing Three test programs Basic infrastructure testing GUI Widget testing Image performance Tested on various platforms and Java versions SuSE and Redhat LinuxJDK 1.3, 1.4 Solaris 8JDK 1.3 MacOS X 10.1.3JDK 1.3 Windows 2000JDK 1.3, 1.4

25. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Functional Testing

26. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Functional Testing

27. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Measuring its Value/Effectiveness Does it really simplify things? No experimentation (yet?), but Abstraction Internet Hardware, OS etc. Deployment Single programming language Extensibility Widget code generation

28. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Future Work Short Term Promotion – feedback, improvements, maturity Encryption of transport (SSL) More Widgets API documentation Longer Term New Platform support (eg. Espial on Phones)

29. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint More Information, Availability BSD Open Source License Free to use for pretty much anything Copyright http://armidale.anu.edu.au Documentation (web pages) arm://armidale.anu.edu.au Armidale Server with the demo programs

30. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint “ First they ignore you, Then they laugh at you, Then they fight you, Then you win ” -- Mahatma Gandhi

31. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Some Design Details

32. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Stand-Alone operation

33. Copyright © 2000-2002 by Shayne R Flint Client-Server Operation