4. The movement toward development, deployment, and maintenance of J2EE-
compliant enterprise applications represents one of the most significant trends
in the corporate IT environment today. Yet, despite the potential, deploying
and maintaining J2EE applications requires tools and technology that are
complex and skill sets that are rare.
J2EE applications also have a different lifecycle than most applications. Most
applications are delivered when finished, but a web application continues to
change as new market requirements are understood, so the marketing / engi-
neering round-trips seem to never end. Result: projects fraught with risk due
to myriad moving pieces with no methodology to hold them all together.
Under the technological pressure and lack of resources, some IT organizations
outsource development. This may be a mistake, because as the applications
evolve, the dependency on third parties for maintenance may slow down
progress as each new third-party relearns what the previous group had done.
The dependency slows the response time that is expected from IT. When
information has become the cheapest commodity, quick response time is vital
for business survival.
Corporations need a single, integrated, development and runtime platform for
J2EE enterprise applications. J2EE-compliant applications servers are a part
of the answer, because they provide critical service-level tasks, but they do
not provide the entire framework for application lifecycle management.
What’s missing is the next level in J2EE applications development, deploy-
ment, and maintenance. A new level in the Internet stack that:
• leverages advances in J2EE-compliant application servers
• embodies the J2EE architecture fully
• provides a single environment which masks the complexity of the
underlying technology, so existing in-house resources can build
applications
• decreases project complexities and risks
• leverages investments already made in legacy data and systems
• provides facilities for total application lifecycle management.
What’s missing is the next level in the Internet stack that delivers J2EE appli-
cations fast.
White Paper: The Fastest Path to Deployment of J2EE Application 3
Today’s IT Challenge: Detangling
J2EE Deployment
Today’s IT Challenge: Detangling J2EE Deployment
5. AltoWeb has achieved a breakthrough in enabling rapid deployment and
maintenance of J2EE applications. AltoWeb Visual e-Business Infrastructure
is J2EE compliant, leverages your investment in J2EE-compliant application
servers, and allows your teams to deploy e-Business applications dramatically
faster and at a dramatically lower cost than you could before. Five character-
istics of the AltoWeb Visual e-Business Infrastructure provide the foundation
for this breakthrough:
A Single Platform
It provides a single, integrated application lifecycle management environment,
combining runtime and development environments in one. It also incorporates
a structured project methodology for application development, deployment,
and maintenance, so that in-house developers and domain experts are instantly
oriented within an application, and are "guided" in their work.
Packaged Components
It provides pre-built components, for rapid assembly and deployment of busi-
ness functionality. AltoWeb also provides an application framework, which
allows small programming components to become components of projects,
and projects to become components of applications. All of these components
are directly managed by the AltoWeb Visual e-Business Infrastructure.
Visual Objects
It substitutes visual objects for text, so that more components of more appli-
cations can be reused by a broader spectrum of in-house developers and
domain experts. Visual objects also allow current staff to recognize errors
faster during development and testing, and reduce the dependence on deep
Java skill sets for all aspects of the software deployment lifecycle.
Live Connections
It enables real-time data connections to, and access logic for, your legacy
environment from the outset of development for rapid prototyping, testing,
and maintenance. It also means that applications maintain a "live" connection
to the information source – whether from within the company or from across
the Internet – so that as data changes dynamically, these changes are reflected
immediately in the application.
Introducing the AltoWeb®
Visual
e-Business Infrastructure
4 White Paper: The Fastest Path to Deployment of J2EE Application
6. OOppeenn SSttaannddaarrddss
It fully utilizes open standards, to ensure that reuse is maximized, and to
ensure that the time to adapt to business change is minimized.
HTMLJAVA J SP XML
W
IRELES
S
PDA
Introducing the AltoWeb® Visual e-Business Infrastructure
White Paper: The Fastest Path to Deployment of J2EE Application 5
Figure 1: The AltoWeb Visual e–business Infrastructure
7. The AltoWeb Visual e-Business Infrastructure is comprised of three structural
components: information logic, business logic, and presentation logic.
Schematically, the relationship can be illustrated as shown in Figure 2
Information Logic
An information logic component implements a configurable data specification
standard that allows rapid, reusable access to internal and external data
sources across a variety of information standards. AltoWeb has developed
data connectors that are rapidly deployed and easy to maintain. Information
sources are logically defined within our AltoServer™ information logic mod-
ule. Information logic supports inputs from heterogeneous sources such as
relational databases, web servers, file servers, and XML servers and virtually
translates this data into a common format upon which applications can be built.
The logical definition of data is an efficient way to link the AltoWeb platform
to a variety of dynamic data sources or to reflect a change in the source of
data in real-time. A developer utilizing this module can access information
from source databases by dragging and dropping tables from heterogeneous
data sources. Because applications are created using a standardized data
view, the source of underlying data can be changed without the need to
rewrite an application.
From Months to Days: Into
Production with the AltoWeb Visual
e-Business Framework
6 White Paper: The Fastest Path to Deployment of J2EE Application
Figure 2: The AltoWeb Framework
8. AltoWeb Visual e-Business information logic provides these standard views,
called MetaObjects. MetaObjects are programmable references to the original
data sources. This architecture eliminates the need for redundant data, repeti-
tive programming, and maintenance. They also allow for a change in data
sources without updating business rules or user interfaces by configuring sim-
ple data source components that hide the vendor-specific calls. In addition,
"hot links" to data sources and runtime environments deliver real information
updates dynamically, and allow developers to debug applications by observing
results in real-time.
Business Logic
This component automates logical relationships between MetaObjects by
visually relating them to define the rules, processes, workflows and actions
for a specific application. The resulting logic is reusable, dynamically modi-
fiable, and can be extended for use in other applications. As developers, ana-
lysts, or others define business logic, AltoWeb Visual e-Business
Infrastructure generates Java code automatically to implement this logic. As a
result, customers deploy their applications more quickly and achieve a faster
time to market.
Presentation Logic
An application generated in the AltoStudio™ (Business Logic Module) can be
broadcast to a variety of designated output formats, such as XML, HTML,
WML, JSP, and Java. AltoWeb presentation logic supports evolving standards;
applications do not have to be rebuilt to support a new output format such as
WML. For instance, every vertical industry today has its own standards for
markup language formats, and the standards are constantly shifting. Writing
applications in this changeable climate presents a real challenge and tradition-
ally represents a significant commitment of time and resources. AltoWeb pro-
vides a solution for processing data between these "standards" by enabling
you to use a transform that maps data from one type of output format to
another. This facility is extremely useful for such cases as cXML to xCBL in
the ongoing dispute for commerce standards, or HTML to WML for convert-
ing existing websites to WAP-enabled servers. And down the road, when the
"standard" changes once again, you will need to modify only one layer of
your AltoWeb platform – not the middleware, application server layers, or the
legacy or packaged applications supported by middleware or application
servers.
This approach represents a quantum leap from commercially available frame-
works today.
From Months to Days: Into Production with the AltoWeb Visual e-Business Framework
White Paper: The Fastest Path to Deployment of J2EE Application 7
9. AltoServer™
AltoServer is the cornerstone of the AltoWeb product line. AltoServer pro-
vides design-time services to enable developers, business analysts, and Web
site designers to create Web-based applications, as well as runtime services
that support launching Web applications, and enable developers and system
administrators to deploy, maintain, and manage the applications.
AltoStudio™
AltoStudio is the design-time component of the AltoWeb product line, and it
enables the visual development of Web applications. AltoStudio users can
connect remotely to AltoServer, and visually define access to back-end data
sources, create business objects, and define relationships among business
objects. Users can then define presentations for end-user interactions without
having to rely on text-based tools.
AltoStudio represents all project and application elements through visual
objects. This enables minimal dependency on Java-skilled developers, because
application development can readily be partitioned according to skill set. For
example, a business analyst can design a business process by creating stub
process components that an application developer can complete. A Web
designer can produce graphics for a Web page, without conflicting with a
developer who is defining the underlying processing that will populate the
page with real-time data. A Java programmer is reserved for writing code to
satisfy unusual requirements, or custom components to solve the most com-
plex problems. This translates into a tangible increase in parallel develop-
ment across functions to speed deployment as well.
AltoClient™
AltoClient is an optional set of Java components supported by the AltoWeb
Application Framework. AltoClient maps real-time information to three-
dimensional shapes, and enables higher end-user interaction with the informa-
tion presented than traditional presentation formats that exist today.
AltoClient delivers presentations of massive amounts of data rapidly.
Patented clients structure the data quickly and offer an enhanced user experi-
ence of the application with a simplified view of complex information.
Manage Your Lifecycle With AltoWeb
Visual e-Business Infrastructure
Products
8 White Paper: The Fastest Path to Deployment of J2EE Application
10. Manage Your Lifecycle With AltoWeb Visual e-Business Infrastructure Products
White Paper: The Fastest Path to Deployment of J2EE Application 9
Figure 3: AltoWeb Visual e-Business in action
11. Today, if you are developing even a relatively simple application on a applica-
tion server, such as a database inquiry function for an employee self-service
application that displays the results in a browser, the following development
steps are required:
1. Install a Java development tool
2 Write Java code to load a JDBC driver and connect to a database
3 Develop an entity bean to access the database
4 Write Query statements
5 Develop a session bean that invokes the entity bean and processes the
results
6. Launch an HTML editor to create an HTML template
7. Write a servlet that calls the session bean, receives and formats the results,
incorporates the HTML template, and generates the desired HTML output
8 Compile the code and begin testing and debugging activities…line by line
9 Iterate until ready for deployment to production servers
10. Place the resulting application file by file in a JAR file and copy it to the
deployment server
11. Configure the deployment application server to load the application code
12. Start the application server
These steps would take a few weeks of development and test before produc-
tion deployment would even be possible.
And consider the tool, resource, resource training, and meeting coordination
expenses involved in the process:
1. DBAs, or a visual database tool, to view the tables and columns within the
database
2. Meetings to translate requirements from the domain expert into specifica-
tions for the technical teams
3 Meetings to review results after development and test, which typically
lead to additional cycles of requirements specification, development, and test
4. A integrated development environment (IDE) itself within which to write
the EBJ and servlet code, such as Visual Cafe or webGain
5 An HTML editor to develop the HTML templates
How to Compress Your Lifecycle
with AltoWeb
10 White Paper: The Fastest Path to Deployment of J2EE Application
12. Compare this conventional approach of Web application development with the
approach embodied in the AltoWeb Visual e-Business Infrastructure:
1. Plan the application on paper first (Figure 4)
2. Graphically define the information access (Figure 5)
3. Graphically create information logic (Figure 6)
4. Graphically define the business logic (Figure 7)
5. Graphically create the presentation logic (Figure 8)
6. Graphically integrate the application components (Figure 9)
7. Validate the application (Figure 10)
8. Run and test the application (Figure 11)
9. Graphically drag and drop the application to a deployment server
Presentation Information, business, and Data access
presentation logic
How to Compress Your Lifecycle with AltoWeb
White Paper: The Fastest Path to Deployment of J2EE Application 11
Figure 4: Application planning
Presentation Information, business, and Data access
presentation logic
13. 12 White Paper: The Fastest Path to Deployment of J2EE Application
Figure 6: Information logic creation
• A data source
defines how to
locate and connect
to the data
• Choose from a
variety of data
source types, including:
– Relational databases
– Web servers
– File systems
– XML
– HMTL
– Flat files
Figure 5: Information access definition
A data source defines how to
locate and connect to the data
• Choose from a variety of data
source types, including:
- Relational databases
- Web servers
- File systems
- XML
- HMTL
- Flat files
A MetaObject describes:
• The data to access
• Custom logic to
perform on the
data
• Operations to
query, insert,
update and delete
the data
14. How to Compress Your Lifecycle with AltoWeb
White Paper: The Fastest Path to Deployment of J2EE Application 13
• A process determines
the work flow
Figure 7: Business logic creation
ynamic
ML page
ntaining
ecial tags
oServer
erprets
tags when
page is
ved
e JSP
plays real-
e data
A process determines
the work flow
A data model stores input
and output data
A JSP view
• A dynamic
HTML page
containing
special tags
• AltoServer
interprets the
tags when the
page is served
• The JSP dis
plays real-time
data
Figure 8: Presentation logic creation
15. 14 White Paper: The Fastest Path to Deployment of J2EE Application
Define the action
that…
• Is invoked by a view
• Triggers a process
• Returns the
appropriate view to
the user, based on
the process
response
Figure 9: Application component integration
An application map shows:
• All JSP pages in an
application
• The actions that join them
together
• How forms and links on a
page trigger actions
• How actions then route to
new pages
Figure 10: Application validation
16. Most of the time-consuming and unproductive tasks from the conventional
method have been removed. To achieve this goal requires a single, integrated,
and visually based development and runtime infrastructure to remove many of
the coding, testing, and deployment steps used today. Most significantly, a
range of skill sets can work in the same environment to deliver the applica-
tions, so much of the need for team meetings and application rework are also
removed. Application maintenance then begins from the same visual applica-
tion illustrated here.
What is the difference in time-to-production? A dramatic reduction in time.
Consider the two J2EE application deployment approaches now side by side:
Reduce Your Time to Market with the AltoWeb Advantage
White Paper: The Fastest Path to Deployment of J2EE Application 15
Figure 11: Applications running and testing
Figure 12: Comparing traditional application development to AltoWeb Visual
e-Business
Without Visual e-Business With Visual e-Business
