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Sash simplifies the Web
By Eric J. Lerner
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Unfortunately for users, the convenience of shopping, trading stock or banking online is sometimes overshadowed by the frustrations of dropped connections, misplaced bookmarks and sites with unintuitive designs. Equally frustrating for the developer is dealing with the complex code and unfamiliar development environments necessary to create these online commerce applications.
A new IBM prototype called Sash Weblications hopes to change that. Weblications, which are essentially HTML Web pages embedded with JavaScript programming logic, combine features of the Web with those of desktop applications. Because they can reside on a desktop, Weblications can make carrying out Web-related tasks even easier for the user, while allowing developers to create standard-looking Windows® programs with such features as tool bars, pull-down menus and all the other graphics of the Windows operating system. Sash also features a powerful, easy to use developer environment for web content authors. Under development since 1998, the Sash project is jointly led by John Ponzo (T.J. Watson Research Center) and Sean Martin (IBM Internet Technology/Server group).
Sweet Simplicity for Developers
"Our goal," says Robert Johnson, manager of e-business Frameworks at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center, "was to provide a better and simpler way for Web developers to create e-business applications."
Until now, Web developers seeking to create Web applications with attributes of Windows-based applications had to create special client programs. This required knowledge of complex programming languages like C++ as well as specific platforms skills, such as those needed to work with Windows' graphical user interface. But programmers can create Weblications with tools that manipulate objects through dragging and clicking, just as they would any other Web page.
Sash provides a set of ready-made modules that can be used with a commonly known programming language like JavaScript to connect Weblications to middleware such as DB2®, LDAP, MQSeries®, and SOAP. This makes it easier to assemble the modules into programs.
Transforming the User Experience
Sash Weblications have advantages for users as well as for programmers. Users can simply surf to a Web page, click on the install button and instantly download a Weblication, instead of putting up with lengthy and complicated installation rituals. Updating is completely automatic, so users avoid the need to download an application each time they establish an Internet connection. The Sash update program is configured so that updates to any Weblications are automatically retrieved and installed without any user intervention.
Perhaps the most useful feature of Weblications is their ability to save data from the Web to a user's PC automatically, where it can be rapidly referenced and manipulated. For example, a Weblication could allow a user to retrieve an article from a newspaper database and automatically save it, so that when the user returns to the program, the article will be immediately available. In a conventional Web browser, the user would have to save a Web page to a file.
A Weblication could save your financial transactions if you decided to transfer your funds or pay your bills. This would then be automatically forwarded to your bank the next time you logged on.
At the moment, Sash Weblications exists as an advanced prototype for Windows available from IBM AlphaWorks®. An Open Source prototype of a Linux ® version was released to gnome.org last summer.
