Survey of Technologies for Web Application Development

Web-based application developers face a dizzying array of platforms, languages, frameworks and technical artifacts to choose from. We survey, classify, and compare technologies supporting Web application development. The classification is based on (1) foundational technologies; (2)integration with other information sources; and (3) dynamic content generation. We further survey and classify software engineering techniques and tools that have been adopted from traditional programming into Web programming. We conclude that, although the infrastructure problems of the Web have largely been solved, the cacophony of technologies for Web-based applications reflects the lack of a solid model tailored for this domain.Comment: 43 page

Monitoring and management application for Pre5ence Oy

The objective of the Bachelor’s thesis was to develop a web application prototype of a monitoring and management system to be used with a new alarm device currently being developed by Pre5ence Oy. The application was developed using only freely available technologies and libraries. The main requirement for the application was the ability to show the position of the device based on provided coordinates using a web map system (Leaflet.js). In addition, a user and device management as well as login and user authentication system were required to manage device ownership and access rights. The application was developed independently with minimal involvement from Pre5ence using mainly PHP and PostgreSQL. A small amount of JavaScript was also developed to integrate with Leaflet.js and create a simple AJAX functionality. The result of the thesis is a working prototype of an application that showcases data collected by devices using a simple and light UI with the included management system to control device ownership, among other things. All initially discussed functions were completed with addition of new requirements introduced during the final stage of development. The client was pleased with the delivered application. Future development of the application was also discussed. In addition to the application, full documentation and user guides were created to assist with future development.Opinnäytetyössä tehtävänä oli kehittää seuranta- ja hallinnointiverkkosovellus, joka tulisi käyttöön uuden, Pre5ence Oy:n kehityksessä olleen hälytyslaitteen rinnalle. So-vellus piti kehittää käyttäen vapaasti saatavilla olevia tekniikoita ja kirjastoja. Sovelluksen päävaatimuksena oli laitteen sijainnin ilmaiseminen käyttäen verkkokart-tapalvelua (Leaflet.js). Tämän lisäksi käyttäjä- ja laitehallinta sekä kirjautuminen ja au-tentikointijärjestelmät olivat tarpeen, jotta laitteiden omistajuutta sekä käyttäjien oikeuksia voisi hallita. Sovellus oli kehitetty itsenäisesti hyvin vähäisellä toimeksiantajan osallistumisella käyt-täen enimmäkseen PHP- sekä PostgreSQL-kieliä. Pieni määrä JavaScript-koodia oli kehi-tetty sovelluksen integroimiseen Leaflet.js-kirjastoon sekä AJAX-toiminnallisuutta var-ten. Työn lopputuloksena on toimiva sovellusprototyyppi, joka näyttää laitteiden keräämää tietoa yksinkertaisessa ja kevyessä käyttöliittymässä joka mm. mahdollistaa laitteiden sekä käyttäjien oikeuksien määrittelyä. Kaikki alun perin sovitut toiminnot, sekä työn loppuvaiheessa pyydetyt toiminnallisuudet saatiin toteutettua. Toimeksiantaja oli tyytyväinen toimitettuun sovellukseen. Jatkokehityksestä keskustel-tiin myös. Sovelluksen lisäksi järjestelmän dokumentaatio sekä käyttöohjeet luotiin jatkokehityksen avuksi

Reducing Client-Server Communication for Efficient Real-Time Web Applications: The Use of Adaptive Polling as A Case Study for Multi-User Web Applications

A key challenge of current multi-user web applications is to provide users with interesting events and information in real-time. This research reviews the most common real-time web techniques to identify drawbacks while exploring solutions to improve simplicity, efficiency, and compatibility within a client-server environment. Two solutions are proposed for enhancing the efficiency of real-time web techniques by reducing client-server communication. First, a model of browser monitoring control observes the browser activity and decides if to postpone client-server communication in the case of inactive tabs. This model was implemented and tested with results demonstrating that a significant number of client-server connections can be avoided in the browser background. These results suggest the solution can be optimised for any real-time technique as it benefits from being a developer side technique that works consistently on all browsers. Second, ‘Adaptive Polling’ is a pull-based real-time web technique to overcome bandwidth issues of the reverse AJAX method of ‘Polling’ by controlling the frequency of requesting updates from the server based on the last server response. This approach is implemented and tested with results showing how a significant number of redundant connections can be avoided while the server does not return updates. This solution is a good alternative to other real-time web techniques as it features low latency, the simplicity of implementation, and compatibility with all browsers and servers

Web Security Detection Tool

According to Government Computer News (GCN) web attacks have been marked as all- time high this year. GCN says that some of the leading security software like SOPHOS detected about 15,000 newly infected web pages daily in initial three months of 2008 [13]. This has lead to the need of efficient software to make web applications robust and sustainable to these attacks. While finding information on different types of attacks, I found that SQL injection and cross site scripting are the most famous among attackers. These attacks are used extensively since, they can be performed using different techniques and it is difficult to make a web application completely immune to these attacks. There are myriad detection tools available which help to detect vulnerabilities in web applications. These tools are mainly categorized as white-box and black-box testing tools. In this writing project, we aim to develop a detection tool which would be efficient and helpful for the users to pinpoint possible vulnerabilities in his/her PHP scripts. We propose a technique to integrate the aforementioned categories of tools under one framework to achieve better detection against possible vulnerabilities. Our system focuses on giving the developer a simple and concise tool which would help him/her to correct possible loopholes in the PHP code snippets

A Prelimanary Exploration on component based software engineering

Component-based software development (CBD) is a methodology that has been embraced by the software industry to accelerate development, save costs and timelines, minimize testing requirements, and boost quality and output. Compared to the conventional software development approach, this led to the system's development being completed more quickly. By choosing components, identifying systems, and evaluating those systems, CBSE contributes significantly to the software development process. The objective of CBSE is to codify and standardize all disciplines that support CBD-related operations. Analysis of the comparison between component-based and scripting technologies reveals that, in terms of qualitative performance, component-based technologies scale more effectively. Further study and application of CBSE are directly related to the CBD approach's success. This paper explores the introductory concepts and comparative analysis related to component-based software engineering which have been around for a while, but proper adaption of CBSE are still lacking issues are also focused