Design and implementation of database powered web systems - experiences from the DEMETER project

A novel design and implementation technique for Web-based distributed information systems is introduced. Using a state machine model, a database powered Web application prototype has been successfully implemented. It is a Europe--wide product marketing system for rural areas funded by the European Commission, and is currently in the pilot phase. These experiences have led us to the development of framework tools to close the semantic gap between distributed databases and the Web browser as standard user interface. The key idea is to create a design language to describe the user interface layout, the functionality and the database transactions in a homogenous way. The implementation of such a system is then composed from several parts with potentially different techniques, for example either a pure HTML interface with all its functionality at the server side or a Java applet with more functionality at the client side. The goal is to generate the different implementations automatically f..

Experiences from Design and Implementation of Real-Life Database Backed Web Applications

Experiences from a novel design and implementation technique for database backed Web information systems are provided. The key idea is to use a state machine model to describe the user interface and the database functionality in a homogenous way. The implementation is then composed from several parts with potentially different techniques, for example either a pure HTML interface with all functionality at the server side or a Java applet with more functionality at the client side. With this virtual client/server model a prototype has been implemented successfully: A Europe--wide product marketing system for rural areas funded by the European Commission. KEYWORDS Database backed Web applications, information retrieval, information systems design and implementation, Web application design language. 1 Database Backed Web Applications This section introduces the research area of the system and gives an overview of the state of the art: Since the first days of the Web people have been se..

Development of an Object Oriented Framework for Design and Implementation of Database Powered Distributed Web Applications with the DEMETER Project as a Real-Life Example

We develop an object oriented framework for generating Internet-distributed database powered Web applications: We rely on the proven technology of standard relational databases, but our tools are designed from scratch especially towards the needs of the Web with small bandwidth connections. We use a state machine model for design and implementation of control elements for Web pages with pure HTML 1 . Sufficient complexity within the user interface and powerful database interaction can be achieved without Java, JavaScript or Active-X, even with more than one concurrent session at once. Based on the state machine model our design language models the application functionality strictly separated from layout and presentation: This approach makes us independent from future changes to HTML and we can even give an application more than one layout without changing the functional structure, e.g. to satisfy users needs. The object oriented structure of the design tools makes the framework exten..