Declarative Ajax Web Applications through SQL++ on a Unified Application State

Implementing even a conceptually simple web application requires an inordinate amount of time. FORWARD addresses three problems that reduce developer productivity: (a) Impedance mismatch across the multiple languages used at different tiers of the application architecture. (b) Distributed data access across the multiple data sources of the application (SQL database, user input of the browser page, session data in the application server, etc). (c) Asynchronous, incremental modification of the pages, as performed by Ajax actions. FORWARD belongs to a novel family of web application frameworks that attack impedance mismatch by offering a single unifying language. FORWARD's language is SQL++, a minimally extended SQL. FORWARD's architecture is based on two novel cornerstones: (a) A Unified Application State (UAS), which is a virtual database over the multiple data sources. The UAS is accessed via distributed SQL++ queries, therefore resolving the distributed data access problem. (b) Declarative page specifications, which treat the data displayed by pages as rendered SQL++ page queries. The resulting pages are automatically incrementally modified by FORWARD. User input on the page becomes part of the UAS. We show that SQL++ captures the semi-structured nature of web pages and subsumes the data models of two important data sources of the UAS: SQL databases and JavaScript components. We show that simple markup is sufficient for creating Ajax displays and for modeling user input on the page as UAS data sources. Finally, we discuss the page specification syntax and semantics that are needed in order to avoid race conditions and conflicts between the user input and the automated Ajax page modifications. FORWARD has been used in the development of eight commercial and academic applications. An alpha-release web-based IDE (itself built in FORWARD) enables development in the cloud.Comment: Proceedings of the 14th International Symposium on Database Programming Languages (DBPL 2013), August 30, 2013, Riva del Garda, Trento, Ital

Evaluating usability of cross-platform smartphone applications

The computing power of smartphones is increasing as time goes. However, the proliferation of multiple different types of operating platforms affected interoperable smartphone applications development. Thus, the cross-platform development tools are coined. Literature showed that smartphone applications developed with the native platforms have better user experience than the cross-platform counterparts. However, comparative evaluation of usability of cross-platform applications on the deployment platforms is not studied yet. In this work, we evaluated usability of a crossword puzzle developed with PhoneGap on Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry. The evaluation was conducted focusing on the developer's adaptation effort to native platforms and the end users. Thus, we observed that usability of the cross-platform crossword puzzle is unaffected on the respective native platforms and the SDKs require only minimal configuration effort. In addition, we observed the prospect of HTML5 and related web technologies as our future work towards evaluating and enhancing usability in composing REST-based services for smartphone applications

SOLUSI BISNIS BERBASIS AJAX : STUDI KASUS SISTEM POS (POINT OF SALE)

Retailers find themselves up against fierce competition. They must fight for every sale, and work hard to build customer loyalty and protect already slim margins. Today, an increasing number of smaller retailers understand the urgent need to catch up to larger players to remain competitive. They also recognize the important role that IT investments play in organizations� strategic decision-making and operational efficiency in all areas of the business, including point of sale, supply chain management, and inventory. The savvy retailer knows that POS (Point Of Sale) data and functionality has quickly become critical to business rather than a mere convenience. In recent time Ajax based applications have become very popular. Ajax is a new model for web applications to provide more responsive and faster user interfaces resembling more closely to dekstop applications. Typical usage areas are user input validation without page submission, integrating small elements from several servers on a single page, and simulating push-services. Especially the latter are promising for enhancing web applications and for realizing them directly in browsers without plug-ins or additional software. Many frameworks and libraries (open source or comercial) are available which support Ajax development. In this final project, we will integrate some open-source Ajax framework to build low-cost, interactive and integrate POS (Point Of Sale) systems which is accessible to a wide retailer through the Internet. This is we call as iPOS. We hope it�s will become a solution for retailers to run their business more efective and effisien

HTTP Mailbox - Asynchronous RESTful Communication

We describe HTTP Mailbox, a mechanism to enable RESTful HTTP communication in an asynchronous mode with a full range of HTTP methods otherwise unavailable to standard clients and servers. HTTP Mailbox allows for broadcast and multicast semantics via HTTP. We evaluate a reference implementation using ApacheBench (a server stress testing tool) demonstrating high throughput (on 1,000 concurrent requests) and a systemic error rate of 0.01%. Finally, we demonstrate our HTTP Mailbox implementation in a human assisted web preservation application called "Preserve Me".Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, 8 code blocks, 3 equations, and 3 table

Maturity of Cloud Application Interoperability Frameworks for Small to Medium Enterprises

Cloud computing has many benefits and organisations have bought into the cost effective and elastic solutions provided by major players in the market. However, cloud computing and Cloud Service Providers (CSP) are still evolving, hence there are differences in how customers connect with each provider to the orchestrate application lifecycle management. A lack of standards can create vendor lock-in. This work investigates current research and possible solutions to the vendor lock-in problem through the use of Cloud Interoperability or multi-cloud frameworks. Software developers and organisations can use these frameworks which abstract the differences between CSPs and mitigate vendor lock-in. A reference web application, with compute intensive operations, was developed and then adapted to each framework to evaluate the usability and stability of each multi-cloud framework, scaling up and down the underlying virtual infrastructure to meet varied demand. Cost conscious Small to Medium Enterprises can use these frameworks to stay competitive by having the ability to switch CSPs quickly for more favourable costs or better performance. Overall this will lead to increased competition and more innovation between CSPs benefiting the customer once more

An Architectural Style for Ajax

A new breed of web application, dubbed AJAX, is emerging in response to a limited degree of interactivity in large-grain stateless Web interactions. At the heart of this new approach lies a single page interaction model that facilitates rich interactivity. We have studied and experimented with several AJAX frameworks trying to understand their architectural properties. In this paper, we summarize three of these frameworks and examine their properties and introduce the SPIAR architectural style. We describe the guiding software engineering principles and the constraints chosen to induce the desired properties. The style emphasizes user interface component development, and intermediary delta-communication between client/server components, to improve user interactivity and ease of development. In addition, we use the concepts and principles to discuss various open issues in AJAX frameworks and application development.Comment: 2nd revision: references ordered, images resized, typo

Updating freeTribe to Support Efficient Synchronous Awareness in the Web Context

Abstract: The research field of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work has been reflected fundamentally in theoretical contributions. This contributions have constitute the base to carry out several intents to facilitate the work of the collaborative systems developers, however, current tool-kits, APIs or class libraries only eliminate partially the gap between the technical aspects that impose the information technology and the stressed social character of the process of collaboration in the World Wide Web. In this paper is presented the framework freeTribe, which involve the domain of the distributed groupwares leaning on the Cooperative Model of the methodology AMENITIES, in the middleware platform ICE and in RIA technologies; freeTribe has been designed as a software framework, to maximize its reusability and adaptability with a minimal programming effort. Support for synchronous group tasks in the Web context is increasingly recognized as a desideratum for collaborative systems and several tools have emerged recently that help groups of people with the same goals to work together, but many issues for these collaborative systems remain under studied. We identified synchronous awareness as one of these issues in collaborative systems, and updated freeTribe with four well-accepted kinds of awareness (group awareness, workspace awareness, contextual awareness, and peripheral awareness) by the community focusing our interest in its synchronous mechanism for efficient interaction in Web contexts.Keywords: computer-supported cooperative work, groupware, synchronous awareness.

Report of the user requirements and web based access for eResearch workshops

The User Requirements and Web Based Access for eResearch Workshop, organized jointly by NeSC and NCeSS, was held on 19 May 2006. The aim was to identify lessons learned from e-Science projects that would contribute to our capacity to make Grid infrastructures and tools usable and accessible for diverse user communities. Its focus was on providing an opportunity for a pragmatic discussion between e-Science end users and tool builders in order to understand usability challenges, technological options, community-specific content and needs, and methodologies for design and development. We invited members of six UK e-Science projects and one US project, trying as far as possible to pair a user and developer from each project in order to discuss their contrasting perspectives and experiences. Three breakout group sessions covered the topics of user-developer relations, commodification, and functionality. There was also extensive post-meeting discussion, summarized here. Additional information on the workshop, including the agenda, participant list, and talk slides, can be found online at http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/685/ Reference: NeSC report UKeS-2006-07 available from http://www.nesc.ac.uk/technical_papers/UKeS-2006-07.pd