An Open Source framework for rapidly developing flexible and easy to maintain web-based applications. [1]
A very powerful model using Extensible Markup Language tagsets for scripting and active content. Given that the next generation of browsers is potentially able to read and act on this sort of thing natively this or something very much like it should be the Next Big Thing.
Imagine an Active Wiki where you could instantiate a vote object that worked. Or embed a single equation calculator.
the above link is a good technical starting point.
It's by Ricoh Usa. plaudits
Could you make a Wiki Wiki Web out of it? --Phl Ip
yes but since the backend is java it might be kinda pokey
This approach has a little drawback : nobody who has programmed for a while would like to write scripts in the way PIA wants you to do it. Too much characters and too unconventional. But for very short scripts it may be applicable. I'm just working on a similar scripting language, which has a very limited set of tags (mostly dataflow : if, while, for ) and one Tag for code. a simple script would look like this :
<%# &myQuery = new SQLQuery ("JDBC1"); &myQuery.setStatement("select * from customer"); &myQuery.open(); $count = &myQuery.getCount(); print "the table has " | FloatToStr($count) | " rows." #%> <%for $i = 0 to $count - 1 %> <tr> <%for $j = 0 to &myQuery.getColCount() %> <td> <%# $cellValue = &myQuery.getCellValue($i, $j) #%> <%if IsFloat($cellValue) #%> <%# print formatFloat($cellValue, 3, 4); #%> <%else /%> <%# print $cellValue; #%> <%/if%> </td> <%/for%> </tr> <%/for%>
all complex actions should take place in functions and java objects. any comments are highly appreciated --Manfred Schaefer
Looks pretty impressive, pages that might help in developing something useful would be Declarative Gui Language, Pattern Primitives Extensible Markup Language and Language Usability.
The one thing I'd be most interested in is something like an Active Wiki where end users could declare objects and invoke methods with arguments.
give me a example, why would this be a great thing ?
Well for one thing you could have semi-reliable vote tallies. Or included simulations illustrating the topic at hand. Or include segments of live datastreams.
Active content could also be highly annoying, but it would be fun to try.
The security model seems like it might be a problem.
Maybe it could be done by limiting the functionality available, possibly providing a limited set of base objects I/O streams with character filters, persistence services with size quotas and some way of automatically detecting and disabling misbehaving processes.--Larry Price
See original on c2.com 