The Reason to Select Eclipse Platform for interAct IDE

There are 2 options we can go for. Those are Graphical User Interface based IDE or Web Interface based IDE.

HTML5 can be used to develop a web based IDE. Drawing, drag and drop are possible with its canvas element.

The implementation of the web based IDE should be done from scratch with the use of javascript along with the HTML5 and there are no projects available out there to reuse and go for Component Based Software Engineering.

Only the latest versions of opera browser supports most of the features specified in HTML5 and the other browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox does not support most of the features of HTML5.

So if we develop a web based IDE users have to limit to the browser, Opera which is used only by 2.5% [1] of the internet users.

By becoming a part of eclipse framework, the interAct IDE becomes immediately usable by the large community of eclipse users and the plug-in based approach allows to tap into various existing and future components being added to the eclipse platform.

Eclipse framework itself provides the editors, viewers and registries and facilitates the integration of the system. Since eclipse is a stable framework there is very low possibility to suspect about the security loop holes and it provides a sandbox development environment.

There are hundreds of documents and tutorials out there to study and the support is very high with an active group of users and contributors.

After studying the advantages and disadvantages we selected eclipse as our development framework for the Graphical User Interface based IDE.

References:

[1]Browser Statistics . [Online]. Viewed 2011 April 26 Available:http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

[2]G. Chafle et al. , (2006, Nov) . An Integrated Development Environment for Web Service Composition. IBM Research Report [Online] Available:http://domino.research.ibm.com/library/cyberdig.nsf/papers/866C3DF536954F458525722E0046C9C9/$File/RI06009.pdf

[3]Wilbert O. Galitz, The essential guide to user interface design, 3rd ed., Wiley Publishing Inc, 2007

Our Solution

Hi friends, I think all of you are clear with the problem we are about to solve. Our solution is basically to design the User Interfaces separately and deeploy them in the WSO2 Business Process Server.

We are proposing to develop an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) including the basic features to drag and drop the elements like textboxes, buttons etc and draw the UIs manually by a UI developer.

Then the designed UIs should be saved in an intermediate format which facilitate to convert them into another formats which are possible to display in different environments like a PC and a mobile.

The Problem

Hi friends,I think now your are clear why do we need human interaction in a business process. Let me go ahead with our project idea.

WSO2 , an opensource middleware company in Sri Lanka has developed a Business Process Server . There we can deploy business processes written in WS-BPEL (Web Services Business Process Execution Language). To get the human interaction in the middle of a business process the human tasks are written in WS-Human Task. It will invoke the WSDL when a human interaction is needed.

A user interface (UI) is needed to get the human interaction to a business process. Currently the UI is limited to a textbox and a submit button and it is automatically generated using JSP. In Shahani madam's words "it is ugly as ever". A textbox and a submit button is not enough to capture the various types of user inputs. With the limited features in the UI users can do lots of mistakes.

As an example they can enter anything where they only supposed to type their gender in the textbox. But there will not be any mistakes if we put two option buttons grouped together to get the gender input.

Our project is to address these issues and come up with a solution to design UIs considering the best practices of User Interface designing, a sub area of Human Computer Interaction. The designed UIs should also be displayed in the web browsers and android phones.

I will write you about our proposed solution in my next post.

take care friends.

Human Computer Interaction for a Business Process

Hi friends, I am writing here to give to some idea about our final year project idea.

I'll start my story assuming all of you are dumb, as much as we were at the start of the project.

Today's world there are so many technologies invented to make our lives easy and to make our selves little bit lazy. And all of us know the easiest way to climb the ladder of success is having good communication. So communication also plays a major role in modern business world.

Web service is also such a method of communication between two electronic devices over a network and it can convert our applications into web-applications. They are published, found and used through the web. "AH" that sounds good. Then we can easily access some application over internet with the help of web services.

We all know now most of the things are automated, but in some situations the system give you (assume u are a human, well vampires are also count) the chance to make a decision. Now you might wonder what are those occasions.

Think about a web service which gives you details about bank loans. It is up to you to decide which loan suites you the best. You will make the decision by looking at the interest rate and the loan duration, monthly payments etc. Now see, it is clear that at some point a business process might need your decision to proceed and that is a human task, only a human can decide and choose. At that point point human will interact with the system and human computer interaction happens.