Exercise 7: Application server platforms in e-commerce

Question

1. Why is the perception getting stronger that integration will become a critical factor in coming days?

2. What is the relationship of AJAX to JQuery (jquery.com) and the lightweight Web 2.0 javascript framework called MooTools (mootools.net) within the enterprise software architecture?

3. What are the similarities between the object-oriented development using model-view-controller (MVC) in Ruby on Rails 2.0 and Action Script 2.0 (Flash animations)?

4. What does it mean to develop RESTful practices into our web applications?

Answers

1

This is because, as the business world grows even more competitive by the day and demands an ever increasing number of efficiency. Technology is demanded to provide solutions for the businesses as efficient as possible and as fast as possible. Thus software development would endure a construction development revolution in which a piece software could be made up of various different programming language, using various different modules that might not be possible to be done without advancements in integration technologies.

A very good example of this is XML. XML provides its users the ability to have a fully integrate able language which are supported across many programming languages, software modules and even database systems. How does XML really does it ? For example if we were to have two companies Y and Z. Y is using Oracle database to manage its transactions.For some reason, Y needs to export a certain part of the database to its new partner company Z who are using a different database technology which are not fully compatible with Oracle to store their data. To overcome this problem, the data from company Y can be exported as an XML data into company Z's database which will automatically identify it as an XML record and now could update itself with the required data from the XML file.

2

AJAX - Asynchronous JavaScript and XML

used for developing light weight web applications that retrieves needed data without interfering with the page's display by handling post-backs. This means users will not have to experience a full page load in pages implementing AJAX for its data retrieval which significantly increases the user friendly-ness of a data-laden web page which sometimes could become a hassle, especially on slow connections.

jQuery & Motools

jQuery & Mootools is an open-source, lightweight, cross-browser javascript library. Both are similar in its purpose such as one is the alternate to the other. Besides its lightweightness these frameworks supports many of the current web 2.0 standards , also supports creation of animations and widgets. Currently, jQuery is dual licensed by MIT License and GNU GPL while Motools is licensed by MIT.

3

The similarity between Ruby on Rails 2.0 and Action Script 2.0 (Flash animations) is that they are both using the same approach ( utilizing MVC for object oriented design), both are class based and rapid development oriented. The only significant difference is the intended usage of the softwares. users will find Ruby on Rails are more into web development while Action Script is mostly used for animations.

4

REST(Representational State Transfer)ful web applicationis a simple web service implemented using HTTP and the principals of REST. REST itself is a style/architecture for a web service / application. The key goal in complying with REST is to make inter-connectivity and compatibility between web applications and services possible.

References

AJAX(n.d.). Retreived April 12, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming)

jQuery(n.d.). Retreived April 12, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JQuery

MooTools(n.d.). Retreived April 12, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mootools

PureMVC(n.d.). Retreived April 12, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PureMVC

PureMVC Standard for AS2(n.d.). Retreived April 12, 2010, from http://trac.puremvc.org/PureMVC_AS2

PureMVC Standard for Ruby(n.d.). Retreived April 12, 2010, from http://trac.puremvc.org/PureMVC_Ruby/

Representational State Transfer(n.d.). Retreived April 12, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer