TechWatch reports on the future of web software engineering
The web has developed considerably over the last ten years from a mechanism for distributing simple text and images and is now used to deliver complex interactive applications. In higher education it is widely used in a diverse range of information service areas including e-learning, portal development, Virtual Research Environments and administration. Such web applications are now complex, sophisticated applications that can be classed as 'enterprise-level' solutions.
In order to facilitate the easier development of such systems, a class of software development tool known as web frameworks has been introduced which provides a skeletal support structure made of software components upon which new software applications can be quickly built.
The latest report from the Jisc-funded TechWatch service - 'Advanced software development for web applications' - outlines the development of web frameworks, discusses the current state of the art and sets out in detail two of the newer developments, Cocoon and Ruby On Rails. The report then speculates on the future direction of frameworks in the next few years and discusses the possibility of non-technical staff being able to build applications using sophisticated tools that generate the code. The tools may be built on developments in tagging software components that are being explored in some recent Semantic Web projects and the report ends by outlining one such project, PiggyBank.
The full report is available from the TechWatch website.