This Demo Application employs several new features, that Enhydra Application Framework provides. Some of them are recent additions, while some were known before, but never used in such a way.
Well known framework for building web applications.
Enhydra Server is an Open Source Java application and webservice server including standard Apache Tomcat (or alternatively Jetty) and Apache Axis with a very big difference !
While the servlet API is used to support presentation logic, the platform contains just about all enterprise level services to build extreme high volume web sites in an n-tier architecture. The architecture is designed for performance and in tests we showed incredible performance numbers !
Many Enhydra servers are powering the Web today, some catering to millions of transactions a day. One of the most talked about features of Enhydra is its Enhydra XMLC technology - an object-oriented standards based replacement for JSP that completely separates the designer and developer.
In addition, Enhydra includes a relational-to-object mapping tool (Enhydra DODS), Enhydra Workflow (Shark and JaWE), clustering web server extensions for Apache, IIS and IPlanet and much more. Check it out, you won't be sorry! :-)
Enhydra has been having pre- and post-processor hooks for a long time. Those were in developers toolbox to use or ignore, but newly introduced features for additional processing of request and responses, really spice the TAF abilities. They're the main doorway for introducing XForms Processor plug-ins into the framework.
Having such plug-in doorway, you may keep your presentation object simple, while adding complex transformations to the resulting XML objects.
For more details consult the Enhydra documentation and the last section.
An emerging standard, that represents the next generation of forms for the Web.
The latest version of W3C recommendation can be found here, while we bring only the highlights.
Forms are an important part of the Web, and they continue to be the primary means for enabling interactive Web applications. Web applications and electronic commerce solutions have sparked the demand for better Web forms with richer interactions. XForms 1.0 is the response to this demand, and provides a new platform-independent markup language for online interaction between a person (through an XForms Processor) and another, usually remote, agent. XForms are the successor to HTML forms, and benefit from the lessons learned from HTML forms.
Further background information on XForms can be found at http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms.
With appropriate pre- and post-processor and set of templates, you may bring the unsuspecting Enhydra Application up to XForms enabled level.
Chiba is one of the XForms Processors supported by TAF.
Chiba provides an Java implementation of the W3C XForms standard, thereby delivering generic, XML-based form-processing on any Java-capable platform either client- or server-side.
Chiba is an Open Source Java Implementation of the W3C XForms standard 'that represents the next generation of forms for the Web'.
Enhydra XMLC is the presentation technology that supports the needs of designers, developers and architects alike, delivering what JSP cannot - strict separation of markup and logic in a true object view of dynamic presentations. XMLC is now fully portable to Tomcat 4, 5 as well as JBoss, BEA, Enhydra and other Web Container implementations.
Together Workflow Server delivers a workflow server with a difference. It is an extendable and embeddable Java Open Source workflow engine framework including a standard implementation completely based on WfMC specifications using XPDL (without any proprietary extensions !) as its native workflow process definition format and the WfMC "ToolAgents" API for server side execution of system activities.
Shark is here enriched with the recent work on defining and implementing the XML schema for workflow instance data, which is similar to already known XPDL. XPIL - XML Process Instance Language gives us the vehicle to carry data out of workflow engine and put it directly into XForms and vice versa.
Bringing the above technologies together, Travel Wizard application attempts to demonstrate, both their isolated and their united benefits.