Dynamic Web Applications

Authoring, Deploying And Consuming Mixed-Namespace XML
T. V. Raman
IBM Research

Outline

  • Characteristics of a Web application.
  • Building on what we have.
  • What’s left to solve.

1

Web Apps As Compound Documents

2

Characteristics

Web Browser —A Means To An End.
  • Deployed across the network.
  • Aggregate network services.
  • Client and server are independent.
  • Delegate functionality to appropriate modules.
  • Multiplicity of interaction paradigms.

Returning the WWW to its basics.

3

Prerequisites

  • Factor (content, style, interaction).
  • Separate memory model from UI logic.
  • Achieve symmetry between Web Services and Web Applications.

Rediscovering the WWW

4

Web Services And Applications

Services Applications
Publish model Publish model
Machine UI Human UI
Callable Callable
Abstraction Aggregation
Eventing
Coarse-grainedFine-grained

Two sides of the same coin.

5

Building On What We Have

6

W3C Architecture

Author Deploy Consume Content App UI XML XML XML XForms XEvents XHTML

7

Versatile Deployment

Consistent eventing model is essential.
  • Stand-alone thick-client.
  • Distributed thin-client.
  • Sporadically connected clients.

Lazy binding ↔ Flexible deployment

8

W3C Building Blocks

ModuleNamespaceProtocolHTTP

9.1

W3C Building Blocks

containerXHTMLRuntimeXML DOM

ModuleNamespaceProtocolHTTP

9.2

W3C Building Blocks

ContentXHTMLStyleCSS

containerXHTMLRuntimeXML DOM

ModuleNamespaceProtocolHTTP

9.3

W3C Building Blocks

Vectors SVG Voice VoiceXML
MetadataRDF triplesTimingSMIL

ContentXHTMLStyleCSS

containerXHTMLRuntimeXML DOM

ModuleNamespaceProtocolHTTP

9.4

W3C Building Blocks

TransformXSL Find XQuery
Types XSchemaAccessXPath

Vectors SVG Voice VoiceXML
MetadataRDF triplesTimingSMIL

ContentXHTMLStyleCSS

containerXHTMLRuntimeXML DOM

ModuleNamespaceProtocolHTTP

9.5

W3C Building Blocks

ModelXFormsEventingXML Events

TransformXSL Find XQuery
Types XSchemaAccessXPath

Vectors SVG Voice VoiceXML
MetadataRDF triplesTimingSMIL

ContentXHTMLStyleCSS

containerXHTMLRuntimeXML DOM

ModuleNamespaceProtocolHTTP

9.6

Open Issues

10

Authoring Mixed-Namespace XML

  • What is the content-type.
  • What are the runtime semantics?
  • How does eventing propagate across namespace boundaries?
  • How does style propagate across namespace boundaries?

11

Loading Mixed Namespace Documents

  • Identifying required components at authoring time.
  • Locating required components at runtime.
  • Initializing and configuring required components.

How do you bootstrap an XML browser?

12

Component Interfaces

Common interfaces for attaching to the framework.
  • Component life-cycle.
  • Resource allocation.
  • Event dispatch across component boundaries.
  • Styling across component boundaries.

13

User Interaction And Eventing

Mediate User Interaction Behavior Via Eventing
  • Use DOM2 Events consistently.
  • Enable components to communicate through the container.
  • Have components bind to a common memory model.

14

Packaging And Security

Bringing it all together
  • Packaging related resources.
  • Linking across resources in a package.
  • Security.
  • Digital signatures and trust.

15

Web Ready To Take-Off (Again)

PIC

16