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Web App Architecture

 
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Hi Sas,

Thanks for all of the info you have shared this week. I have a general architecture question regarding Web Apps involving XML, DHTML, DOM, Ajax. What is a good web architecture/ design pattern to be able to seperate layout, business logic, and style. And how would you componentize each tier in a web application?

Do you have any comments on specific technologies such as Ajax, DHTML, Atals, any other open source toolkits.

Thanks for your help,
Steve
 
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Hi Steve

I really want to draw you a diagram! The architecture I describe below is a classic Ajax approach.

Firstly, this approach involves generating XML content on the server usually from a database or some other enterprise level application, although you can create static XML pages from software such as Office 2003.

An XHTML page on the client provides the interface for the data with styling provided by CSS. The XHTML page also includes JavaScript that scripts the XMLHttpRequest object. This object requests the XML content from the server. You can also POST information as part of this request.

JavaScript also provides a way to apply an XSLT stylesheet which generates XHTML for inclusion in the interface. Ajax applications use DHTML approaches to display and manipulate the data in the interface - styling updated data, changing the content of DIV elements etc.

The only problem I see with Ajax is that it's easy to disable by turning off JavaScript and because the processing is carried out on the client, it can slow to a grinding halt if there's too much data.

There are many toolkits and cross-browser libraries that you can use. I have worked with the Sarissa library quite a bit. Others include Backbase, Bindows, Dojo, qooxdoo etc.

I hope that helps.

Cheers

Sas Jacobs
 
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