Automatic client-server partitioning of data-driven web applications

ABSTRACT

Current application development tools provide completely different programming models for the application server (e.g., Java and J2EE) and the client web browser (e.g., JavaScript and HTML). Consequently, the application developer is forced to partition the application code between the server and client at the time of writing the application. However, the partitioning of the code between the client and server may have to be changed during the evolution of the application for performance reasons (it may be better to push more functionality to the client), for correctness reasons (data that conflicts with multiple clients cannot always be pushed to clients), and for supporting clients with different computing power (browsers on desktops vs. PDAs). Since the client and server use different programming models, moving application code from client to server (and vice versa) reduces programmer productivity and also has the potential to introduce concurrency bugs. In this demonstration, we advocate an alternative solution to this problem: we propose developing applications using a unified declarative high-level language called Hilda, and show how a Hilda compiler can automatically (and correctly) partition Hilda code between the client and the server using a real Course Management System application. We illustrate our techniques using two clients: a powerful laptop machine and a less powerful PDA.

REFERENCES

• 1: Grady Booch , James Rumbaugh , Ivar Jacobson, Unified Modeling Language User Guide, The (2nd Edition) (Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series), Addison-Wesley Professional, 2005
• 2: Chavdar Botev , Hubert Chao , Theodore Chao , Yim Cheng , Raymond Doyle , Sergey Grankin , Jon Guarino , Saikat Guha , Pei-Chen Lee , Dan Perry , Christopher Re , Ilya Rifkin , Tingyan Yuan , Dora Abdullah , Kathy Carpenter , David Gries , Dexter Kozen , Andrew Myers , David Schwartz , Jayavel Shanmugasundaram, Supporting workflow in a course management system, Proceedings of the 36th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education, February 23-27, 2005, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
• 3: Fan Yang , Jayavel Shanmugasundaram , Mirek Riedewald , Johannes Gehrke, Hilda: A High-Level Language for Data-DrivenWeb Applications, Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE'06), p.32, April 03-07, 2006 [doi>10.1109/ICDE.2006.75]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT
      H.2.4 Systems
          Subjects: Distributed databases

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.4 Distributed Systems
          Subjects: Client/server

  H. Information Systems
  H.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT
      H.2.0 General

General Terms:
Design, Management