CSR: Medium: A Component Architecture for Web Applications

Stanford University, Stanford CA

Investigators

Abstract

Although the World-Wide-Web was initially conceived as a vehicle for delivering documents, it is now being used more and more for delivering sophisticated interactive applications. However, creating powerful Web applications is a difficult task and current development tools exacerbate the problems with a low-level approach that discourages modularity and code reuse. This project is exploring a new architecture for Web application development, where applications are created by assembling high-level reusable components rather than building from scratch. A component architecture can dramatically simplify the development of interactive Web applications by encouraging reusability and by hiding inside the components many of the complexities that bedevil Web developers today. This project is exploring three aspects of component architectures: new abstractions for higher-level Web components, including layout management; abstractions for layering data management components to simplify transformations, business rules, and aggregation; and the application of component architectures to mobile devices in order to manage differences in device form factors. We are exploring design choices, creating production-quality implementations for both framework elements and specific components, and evaluating the implementations. In addition, we are releasing the framework in open-source form for others to use. Overall, this project will increase our understanding of component-based architectures and Web application development.