Topic 4 - Exercise 7

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

Answer:

Having or running an IT systems or infrastructure in a dispersed, broken up and divided manner is slowly becoming a thing of the past. In order to maintain the uninterrupted and successful business flow companies are gradually required to merge and consolidate their primary operational functions into an easy to manage and access mesh of systems which in turn reward them with faster processing times and speedy objective delivery. To give an example, the company which I work for has achieved a greater level of centralization due to creating a linkage between various systems and applications used across the board in different departments. Due to these reforms people requesting various sorts of data for business or engineering modeling exercises have now simultaneous access to all facades of the mission critical applications e.g. GIS, contact center, revenue, billing, operations center, engineering etc. without the need of time consuming and inaccurate exercises to retrieve information based on individual systems.  To be even more precise, lets assume that Bill (an engineer responsible for creating a strategic plan for saving water usage across North Melbourne area) requires most up-to-date and accurate data on the latest consumption and costs , population trends,  water infrastructure present in the area and more. Thanks to a tight integration of the company's systems this data can be put together in a matter of minutes and with an appropriate algorithmic software the results can be accurately predicted, taking the guesswork out of the findings and cutting the time and staff efforts to a minimum. Now, instead of going through various departments, trying to match the data to form a sensible and accurate result and coming up with an expensive and unreliable modeling techniques, Bill can leave it all to a computer(s). This saves time, effort, money and  resources.

2. What is the relationship of Ajax to JQuery and the lightweight Web 2.0 Javascript framework called MooTools with the enterprise software architecture?

Answer:

Ajax (shorthand for asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a group of interrelated web development techniques used on the client-side to create interactive web applications. With Ajax, web applications can retrieve data from the server asynchronously in the background without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page. The use of Ajax techniques has led to an increase in interactive or dynamic interfaces on web pages.

jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.

MooTools is a compact, modular, Object-Oriented JavaScript framework designed for the intermediate to advanced JavaScript developer. It allows you to write powerful, flexible, and cross-browser code with its elegant, well documented, and coherent API.

Both jQuery and MooTools are very popular and used extensively. They are slight differences between the two of them (as described HERE). As for their relationship to Ajax, quite simply, Ajax is a technique for handling external data through JavaScript asynchronously, without reloading the entire page whereas jQuery and MooTools are libraries that facilitate that function. 

To see how Ajax is used today and its most popular applications please click HERE

What are teh similarities between the object-oriented development using model-view-controller in Ruby on Rails 2.0 and Action Script 2.0?

Answer:

Model–View–Controller (MVC) is a software architecture, currently considered as an architectural pattern used in software engineering. The pattern isolates "domain logic" (the application logic for the user) from input and presentation (GUI), permitting independent development, testing and maintenance of each.

Ruby on Rails MVC framework:

The Model View Controller principle divides the work of an application into three separate but closely cooperative subsystems.

    Model (ActiveRecord ) :

Maintains the relationship between Object and Database and handles validation, association, transactions, and more.

This subsystem is implemented in ActiveRecord library which provides an interface and binding between the tables in a relational database and the Ruby program code that manipulates database records. Ruby method names are automatically generated from the field names of database tables, and so on.

    View ( ActionView )

A presentation of data in a particular format, triggered by a controller's decision to present the data. They are script based templating systems like JSP, ASP, PHP and very easy to integrate with AJAX technology.

This subsystem is implemented in ActionView library which is an Embedded Ruby (ERb) based system for defining presentation templates for data presentation. Every Web connection to a Rails application results in the displaying of a view.

    Controller ( ActionController ):

The facility within the application that directs traffic, on the one hand querying the models for specific data, and on the other hand organizing that data (searching, sorting, massaging it) into a form that fits the needs of a given view.

This subsystem is implemented in ActionController which is a data broker sitting between ActiveRecord (the database interface) and ActionView (the presentation engine).

Both ActionScript, and Ruby on Rails can be used for object-oriented development using MVC, however Ruby on Rails is for Website and application development while the ActionScript is dedicated for a specific environment - Flash animations.

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

Answer:

In the broadest terms, REST outlines how to define and address sources of specific information, commonly known as resources. Resources are referred to individually with a universal resource identifier, such as the URL used for Web addresses. The term REST often describes any simple interface used to transmit domain-specific data over HTTP without the need for additional messaging layers or session tracking.

REST is an architectural style, not a standard or implementation specification. The largest REST application is the Web itself, characterized by the use of HTTP for transport and URLs as addressing mechanisms. REST can support any type of media, and XML is the most popular method used to transport and represent structured information. REST is used with HTML, XHTML, RSS and proprietary XML vocabularies.

Systems that follow Fieldings REST principles can be called RESTful, and some of RESTs advocates call themselves RESTafarians. But REST isn't the only possible approach to building network applications, and there is some disagreement as to whether another might be preferable.

References:

http://www.noupe.com/ajax/how-ajax-works.html accessed on 14.04.2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming) accessed on 14.04.2010
http://mootools.net/ accessed on 14.04.2010
http://jquery.com/ accessed on 14.10.2010
http://www.as3dp.com/2007/12/27/minimalist-mvc-example-using-the-puremvc-framework/ accessed on 14.10.2010