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Web Application Based On Google Web Toolkit

Posted on:2011-01-31Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:O ZhangFull Text:PDF
GTID:2178360308477266Subject:Computer application technology
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
In the early part of this century, The big breakthrough happened with the development of asynchronous JavaScript techniques, which eliminated web applications'painful page loading usability issues. Using these techniques, JavaScript makes requests to the server for data asynchronously to update the web page without causing a refresh. The previously laborious multipage web applications started to behave like seamless desktop applications, without pauses or complete interface refreshes between actions. The increased use of JavaScript also let developers put more programmatic logic in the client side of the application, which in turn reduced the load on the server: Data would only be loaded when necessary, and the client application could hold state information that previously had been handled on the server. And as an added bonus, improvements in usability were typically paired with impprovements in performance. While the techniques, dubbed Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), initially seemed like a bit of a hack, they have largely been embraced by both web users and developers. the adoption of Ajax applications increased, competition and application complexity also increased, and development started to hit a scalability problem that other application development techniques handled with object-oriented design and powerful development tools. However, Ajax evolved out of technologies never meant to build applications, much less big applications, and there weren't any available tools to help build large applications with JavaScript in the way there are for desktop applications. Support emerged with frameworks, which provided better foundations for building applications (like Dojo, which is a community effort). But no matter how many libraries developed for building Ajax applications, Ajax was being used for something it was never designed to do.Writing Ajax applications'programmatic logic in JavaScript, an interpreted scripting language, makes it hard for developers to scale an application's size and complexity the way developers can with languages meant for desktop applications. Like Ajax, desktop applications have frameworks too. However, they often add more weight to the application and are often not the best answer to help scale an application. More importantly, desktop applications have software engineering tools, which have had much more time to mature than Ajax application tools. These software engineering tools mature faster too, since they're also used for server-side applications, which often are more complex and require even more engineering. In addition to the absence of tools, JavaScript also lacks the language features that dramatically improve the ability to build complex applications, including certain object-oriented programming constructs and the ability to catch errors at compile time. Many companies, having recognized both the success and limitations of Ajax applications, want to get in on the action and provide an alternative to Ajax for richer web experiences. Applications built with these technologies, including Ajax applications, can be classified as Rich Internet Applications (RIAs).Google released their toolkit the Google Web Toolkit the most powerful tool for creating Ajax applications. GWT contains many tools that assist with building Ajax applications, including a user interface library of widgets and panels, libraries to perform asynchronous server communication through HTTP or remote procedure calls (RPCs), tools to interoperate with other web applications using JavaScript, JSON, and XML, and access to a mature development environment for software engineering.
Keywords/Search Tags:Google Web Toolkit, Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, Model View Controller, Design Pattens, Remote Procedure Call, Rich Internet Applications
PDF Full Text Request
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