exercise 7

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

Online systems which allow transfer of goods, services and money in a safe and secure environment are e-commerce systems. Examples of such online systems are amazon, ebay which makes buying and selling of products very convenient and efficient. Hence these services are highly in demand universally.

In presence of large number of such systems, integration is very important factor for their success. In coming generation, integration of systems will become very important because of factors such as reduction of costs, integration and security of transactions, ability to take accurate decisions due to availability of information and the management would have greater control.

Reference :

Huuhtanen, J 2004. Critical Success Factors in Integration of E-Commerce and Financial Information Systems, from http://www.pafis.shh.fi/graduates/juhhuu01.pdf.

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?

AJAX(Asynchronous JavaScript and XML): It is a pure javascript application framework that does work on client-side in order to produce an interactive web application. It makes possible the exchange of data with server, where the reloading of current page is not necessary, thus making the webpage interactive and dynamic.

JQuery: A collection of Javascript Library which makes easy the processes like event handling, traversing HTM document, Ajax interaction for Rapid Web Development and animating, thus making it simpler and faster is JQuery. It was made to alter how javascript was written. It contains all its effects, common DOM, event and Ajax functions and is mostly a single JavaScript file. Hence just by calling $.ajax and related methods, calling ajax functions becomes possible.

MooTools:

It is a modular JavaScript Web application framework and is object oriented. It is developed to produce with its coherent a flexible, strong and cross browser code and a properly documented API (mootools.net). It was created in alteration of DOM elements, CSS, Ajax requests, native JavaScript objects and more. It provides methods such as onSuccess, onRequest, onComplete etc and thus makes the use of Ajax simpler.

Thus, both the frameworks result in simplifying use of Ajax.

Reference :

Ajax. The colabarative Application Platform. from http://ajax.org

jQuery. jQuery: The Write Less, Do More, JavaScript Library.

from http://jquery.com/

MooTools. MooTools a compact javascript framework. from

http://mootools.org

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)?

Taking inspiration from Perl, Eiffel, Lisp and SmallTalk, Ruby is a scripting language which is object oriented and combines syntax. Action Script 2.0 is also a scripting based language and is utilized in the development of web applications and software in Adobe Flash Player platform.

The similarities in these languages are that both of them have open classes and thus they allow addition of methods or property to an already existing class. The addition can be done whenever we want outside the class definition and it is also often called as monkey-patching. However, if performed carelessly, this functionality can prove to be a major drawback.

Reference :

AS2 OOP: Class Structure, 2009. from http://www.kirupa.com/developer/oop2/AS2OOPClassStructure7.htm

Ruby (programming language). Wikipedia. 2010. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. fromhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_(programming_language)

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

Certain sets of architecture constraints are specified in an architectural style by a technology or framework known as Representational State Transfer (REST). It is not a new technology. An uniform interface is used for all services and thus each website provides the same service. This is the main idea behind this style. It is used in identifying existing problems, comparing alternative solutions and describing desired Web Architecture. The aims of Restful practices comprise of generality of interfaces, scalability of the component interaction, independent arrangement of components and intermediary component to reduce latency, impel security and cover legacy systems.

Reference :

Wilde, E. 2004. Representational State Transfer, from http://dret.net/lectures/web-spring09/rest

Representational State Transfer. Wikipedia. 2010.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer