Exercise 7

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

The Internet is showing more businesses to a global customer base which means that organisations are faced with a heterogeneous environment as customers have different types of operating systems, applications, and hardware. In order to remain business competition, they must be able to operate across distributed systems by having a greater integrated architecture, customers can gain access to a wider variety of information and services (Oracle, 2007). The application and web service standards such as XML and SOAP integration will become an increasing requirement for the business to participate over divided systems

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?

Nowadays, many people is getting start with JavaScript with which we have two options that is JQuery and Web2.0 javascript called MooTools.

Generally, jQuery is at least a dozen JavaScript frameworks. The Web 2.0 has called upon JavaScript that defines any Web 2.0 site. This huge increase of workload for JavaScript has been called for JavaScript frameworks which do common Web 2.0 tasks for us about visual effects like fading, DOM traversal or manipulation (Webappers, n.d.). Ajax to jQuery has become one of the most popular JavaScript framework, because of its small footprint, and it focus on the core tasks shared through any Web 2.0 project. MooTools is a lightweight framework, however MooTools is not another lightweight framework which stack-up. MooTools divide the codes by developing functions in small code bases (AJAX with, n.d.).

In detail, jQuery focuses on expressiveness, quick and easy coding, and the DOM during MooTools focuses on inheritance, extension, legibility, and maintainability. jQuery is easy to get started and see quick results, but it can turn into code which is hard to keep, meantime MooTools takes longer to require you to write more code upfront before user see results. Both frameworks maintain their cores rather lean, leaving it to users to write extensions. MooTools gives users tools to code anything, and gives user extensibility and holistic approach of a superset of jQuery’s features, but jQuery focus on a slick DOM API that does not interfere user from using the native methods of JavaScript like MooTools.

Reference

Webappers.(n.d.). Chose jQuery or MooTools Javasxript Framework.Retrieved April 3, 2010, from http://www.webappers.com/2009/05/23/choose-jquery-or-mootools-javascript-framework/

AJAXwith.(n.d.). MooTools – A Review. Retrieved April 3, 2010, from http://www.ajaxwith.com/MooTools-A-Review.html

JavaScriptKit.(n.d.). "Learning jQuery" Book review. Retrieved April 3, 2010, from http://www.javascriptkit.com/javatutors/learningjquerybook.shtml

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)?

:

Ruby and ActionScript are similar in which both applications are object-oriented languages. Usually, ActionScript is used as the frontend of applications while Ruby on Rail is used as the backend (Zhang, 2008). They use the Model-View-Controller (MVC) model in application development, even if there is the difference in the structure way. However, the general functions based on the model are common.

It is generally believed that each components of the model is self contained, in this case, if one component changes, it would not influence other two components. So it reduce coding and errors. The generic elements both Ruby on Rails and ActionScript of the three elements that makes the MVC model(Zhang, 2008).

Model
Handles both the data that needs to be retrieved from the database and applies business rules or logic so it acts as a gatekeeper and data store. Instructions come from the controller.

View
The view produces the interface data from the model.

Controller
The controller accepts user input usually from the browser.
Decides how to control a particular request.
Combine information from the browser request and creates, or updates data

Finally, these two frameworks there have been tried to organise on Ruby on Rails “convention over configuration” via a development project which is called JumpShip that is based on an ActionScript. The main purpose is to remove Flash Remote and replace it with Ruby on Rails and Rails Gateway (Scanlon, 2008)

References

Zhang, M. (2008). ActionScript Framework JumpShip 3.1 Released with Extensive Ruby on Rails Support. Retrieved April 2, 2010 from

http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/06/jumpship-31-released

Scanlon, J. (2008). JumpShip. Retrieved April 3, 2010 from http://osflash.org/projects/jumpship

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

A RESTful web service is a implemented simple web service using HTTP. Web service can be thought about as a collection of resources. A RESTful design appropriates when the web services are absolutely stateless. A good test is to consider whether the interaction can survive a restart of the server. If the web service return is not smoothly run, then the caching infrastructure that web servers and other mediators essentially provide can be enforced to improve performance (Peej, n.d.). However, the developer should take care, because caches are limited to the HTTP GET method for many servers. In RESTFul web service, there is a mapping between the HTTP methods. The following guidelines are enough (Peej, n.d.):

• GET is used to recover data on a resource.
• POST is used to create a new resource.
• PUT is used to update existing data.
• DELETE is used to remove a data.

Reference

Peej.(n.d.). A RESTful Web service, an example. Retrieved April 3, 2010, from http://www.peej.co.uk/articles/restfully-delicious.html