Web Machines : a new platform for application construction and execution

In today's world, computer application platforms are becoming increasingly important in providing positive application end-user and developer experiences. While there are many successful application platforms available, none are perfect or ideal. In this thesis, I describe the architecture, design and implementation of a new application platform I have developed called Web Machines which attempts to achieve exactly this goal: to be the ideal platform for application construction and execution. In order to better define an ideal application platform, I develop a set of 20 different specific goal criteria for platform end-user experience, developer experience, and administrator experience, and analyze how five different currently successful application platforms achieve those goals. These goals and platform analyses help motivate the architecture and design of Web Machines. The end result is a hybrid remote server/local client application platform that supports construction and execution of applications called Machines. Machine backend logic can be executed either remotely on registered Machine servers, or locally on a user's own computer, and Machine frontend interfaces are rendered and used in a rich, desktop-like MDI web application called the Web Machines environment. Web Machines also provides several different powerful methods for constructing Machines, including both traditional programming code-based approaches, and novel, totally visual approaches which center around drawing applications together as graphs of other applications and components.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Bryant, Robert A., M. Eng. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• David L. Brock.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/53100

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/53100