Weaveworld and Weaveworld.org - What is it?

Weaveworld.org is a free RAD (i.e., "Rapid Application Development") framework for developing Web Applications and Web Services. The main concepts are platform independent; currently a Java implementation is available for Java based Web Servers (such as Tomcat) or Application Severs (Glassfish, Websphere, etc.).

Weaveworld.org can be downloaded and is for free use. There's a tutorial and an overview about the main features.

Weaveworld.org provides the following main features:

  • WWPublisher features accessing data of existing Web Pages and Web Applications as Web Services (SOAP-protocol), or in simple XML or JSON formats.  Extending static or generated html pages by some extra ("ww") tags, pages appear same in browsers, but WWPublisher is able to extract their data content. WWPublisher also converts parameters, thus simple Web Pages can be accessed as Web Services, or from AJAX requests. Furthermore, Web Applications can be programmatically tested (unit tests, etc.).    

  • GenDA-SQL features an easy high level way to access and modify data of relational databases (RDBMS). (GenDA means "General Data Access".) GenDA-SQL can be used (1) in Java programs, (2) in ONCE-Light services, (3) in JSPs with the help of the ONCE-Light Taglibrary.

  • ONCE-Light features defining operations using high level notations, and make them available (1) as Web Services or for other Web Request (e.g., AJAX), (2) for other ONCE operations or (3) for Java programs (4) for JSPs using the ONCE-Light Taglibrary. (ONCE stands for "Open Network Computation/Collaboration Environment".) Defined operations may use GenDA-SQL for data handling. Operations can be defined in (1) ONCE-Light's high level language (currently in XML), or (2) in Java (only one line of XML is needed to publish an existing Java class). Defined operations can easily access each other or Web Services (maybe via WWPublisher). ONCE-Light Taglibrary provides access operations and GenDA-SQL statements from JSP (Java Server Pages).

  • Furthermore, Doc1st is part of the Weaveworld.org package. Doc1st is an extension of the well-known "test first" method. Using Doc1st, developers firstly create tutorial like documents (overviews) describing the needed features, where code examples of usages are test fragments. Thus, design level documentations, tests and code lines are bound together. Doc1st has several measurements, run tests and creates HTML documents from the descriptions.  

  • Additionally, Weaveworld.org contains the ONCE-Utilities package. That is a "must have" framework for Java programming (value handling, conversions, String and File handling, Logging, etc.)

(Weaveworld.org is part of the Weaveworld framework (shortly 'ww') that is under development. Weaveworld has the following main features: WWPages for creating Web User Interfaces, GenDA for high level, platform independent, model based access of data, and ONCE for high level definition of operations. (These parts cover the three-layers of a typical application.) Weaveworld is an "Information Server" (next generation of so called Application Servers), an engine to define and run "business driven" (i.e., "data intensive") applications. Applications can be defined on high level notations that need only system analyzer's knowledge (coding knowledge isn't required).

Weaveworld is especially targeted to build complex networks of Internet/Intranet applications (Web Applications, Web Services, SOA, AJAX, messaging, etc.); that's where the name comes from.)