Since this project was proposed a couple weeks ago, it now has a
champion, three mentors, and has further diversified its initial
committership. Additional details about the project have been
discussed on this list, and I don't believe there are any unresolved
concerns.
Therefore, as the champion of this project, I am calling a vote. As
usual, the binding votes will be those case by Incubator PMC members
(since the project is requesting sponsorship from the Incubator PMC);
however all participants on this list are encouraged to vote if they
have a strong feeling one way or another.
The traditional 72-hour voting period would end in the middle of the
weekend; so I'll propose extending that by an additional day, with the
vote closing on Monday May 22, 2006 18:00 UTC (see
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=5&day=22&year=2006&hour=18&min=0&sec=0&p1=0)
Please vote on the XAP proposal (rev 12 on the wiki and copied below).
Cliff
----
http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/XapProposal?action=recall&rev=12
----
XAP - eXtensible Ajax Platform
An Ajax-based Rich Internet Application framework
April 2006, Coach Wei (cwei at nexaweb dot com)
PROJECT PROPOSAL
XAP is to provide an XML-based declarative framework for building,
deploying and maintaining rich, interactive, Ajax-powered web
applications. A basic principal of XAP is to leverage existing Ajax
projects such as Apache Kabuki and Dojo, as well as other community
efforts such as Eclipse openAjax. It aims to be pluggable with various
Ajax toolkits, reduce the need of scripting and solve the development
challenge as well as application maintenance challenges associated
with Ajax programming.
0. Rationale
Ajax is a widely recognized approach for building richer, dynamic,
more interactive web applications, known as "Rich Internet
Application" (RIA). RIA combines the richness of desktop software with
the universal deployment advantages of the web, representing the next
evolution of application development.
With the recent excitement around Ajax, tremendous effort is underway,
from many directions, to make the creation of RIAs easier. Toolkits
that provide DHTML and JavaScript (Ajax) support are proliferating and
provide a rich set of functionality allowing developers to quickly add
dynamic features to web applications.
Although these toolkits ease development of Ajax-powered web
applications, there are still significant development and maintenance
challenges, mainly associated with writing, debugging and maintaining
JavaScript code. In particular, some developers would prefer not to
use JavaScript.
There are many possible solutions to address these challenges and each
approach can solve the challenges to a different degree. On the one
side, open source community has responded with Apache Kabuki and
Eclipse openAjax projects. On the other side, standard organizations
have been working on standardizing Ajax(XmlHttpRequest for example)
and related browser behaviors. A higher level abstraction via a
declarative format helps solve the Ajax development challenges by
reducing the need for scripting while providing a straightforward way
of building rich user interfaces, but also provides a mechanism to
combine the above mentioned community efforts together for greater
benefits.
Building on these vibrant community efforts already underway, the
proposed project is to create an extensible software framework for
building and deploying Ajax-powered rich internet applications
declaratively. The project is "pluggable" with client side Ajax
toolkits such as Kabuki, works with openAjax as well as other Ajax
initiatives. The mission of this project is to encourage innovation
around declarative Ajax development, build a community, and provide an
open source framework for building and deploying rich internet
applications independent of browsers and servers.
This project seeks to provide
* XML markup that provides a declarative format for Ajax-based
rich user interface, separating presentation and behavior;
* Declarative data binding that links user interface components
with data sources, separating presentation and data;
* Declarative modification syntax for updating the user interface;
* A "bridge" mechanism that allows easy plug-in of existing UI
Ajax toolkits.
* A framework that ties everything together; enabling asynchronous
update and event handling;
The architecture of this proposal embraces existing Ajax toolkits,
such as Apache Kabuki and Dojo. At the core of the architecture is the
concept of "bridges" that allow declarative tags to be connected to
any toolkit and allow the toolkits to be easily interchanged. It also
supports "plugins", allowing tags to be easily added or extended to
support custom widgets and behavior.
Key benefits:
* XML syntax describes UI instead of JavaScript code
* XML syntax describes asynchronous update instead of JavaScript code
* Built in support for data binding
* Enables tools that can generate XML to create the UI rather than
JavaScript
* Simplifies application development and maintenance
* Extendable with various JavaScript UI toolkits via the "bridge" mechanism
0.1 Criteria
Meritocracy:
We plan to do everything possible to encourage an environment that
supports meritocracy. We know that meritocracies don't just evolve
from good intentions; they require actively asking the community for
help, listing/specifying the work that needs to be done, and keeping
track of and encouraging members of the community who make any
contributions.
Community:
We are committed to building a strong community around the proposed
project. The committers will supply example code and documentation to
help bring new members up to speed as to the current functionality of
the code and how it is organized and maintained. In addition, the
committers plan to spend the time necessary to answer user and
developer questions. Along with our plans to encourage meritocracy
(mentioned above), we hope these efforts will eventually create a user
and development community that can live beyond the contribution of any
one person and beyond the goals of any contributor's employer.
Core Developers:
More than half of the initial committers are key members of Nexaweb's
development, test, and project management team. The rest are
developers who have had significant experience with the framework or
the technologies it is built upon. Some of these committers are
contributing to this project on behalf of their employer, some of them
are self-employed consultants, and some of them are just contributing
as individuals.
Alignment:
The project is a pure client-side implementation. It should support
any server side infrastructure. The initial code base is targeted to
support the following environments:
* Client side: Internet Explorer and Firefox initially. We expect
support for other browsers in the future.
* Server side: any web server environment (Tomcat, Geronimo,
Apache, .NET, PHP, etc.).
For further information, please see http://www.nexaweb.com/open/xap
and http://www.openxal.org
0.2 Warning signs
Orphaned products:
The initial code contribution is being developed specifically for the
developer community and is not an orphaned product. The committers
have long term interest to develop and maintain the code.
Inexperience with open source:
Only a few of the initial committers have contributed to open source
projects; however, all of the initial committers have been reading
Apache process documents, the incubator general mailing list, and the
dev lists of current Apache projects. We've also spent time with ASF
members and at ApacheCon to prepare ourselves as much as possible.
Homogenous developers:
The initial list of developers consists primarily of paid employees of
the donating company. The donating company has reached out and will
continue to reach out to build a diverse and vibrant community. The
remaining initial committers are independent. They have had experience
with the technology before and are personally passionate about the
technology.
The committers are geographically distributed. They are experienced
with working in a distributed environment.
Reliance on salaried developers:
Some of the initial committers are salaried developers employed by
Nexaweb. Nexaweb is committed to open source and committed to building
a community for this project. The remaining developers are individual
volunteers who are passionate about the technology. The donating
company has reached out and will continue to reach out in its effort
to build a diverse community.
No ties to other Apache products:
This proposal is related to many ongoing projects at Apache, such as
Kabuki and MyFaces, and it fits into the overall vision of that set of
projects. There is an optional dependency on Kabuki.
A fascination with the Apache brand:
The committers are intent on developing a strong open source community
around the XAP framework whether Apache is the right place or not;
however, we believe that the project's current use of Apache projects,
the potential for future synergies, and the Apache way of developing
software make the ASF the ideal host community.
1. Scope
Provide declarative syntax and framework for writing Ajax applications.
The initial commit will contain:
* XML processing abstraction
* XPath support - limited support initially
* Incremental Update - remove, set-attribute and append
* UI Component Library bridges
* Declarative framework
* Open XML specification and schema
* Samples and documentation
For further technical or background information, please see:
http://www.nexaweb.com/open/xap and http://www.openxal.org/.
2. Identify the initial source from which the subprojects are to be populated
The initial source will be denoted by Nexaweb Technologies Inc. The
donating company will contribute the intial code base immediately
after the proposal is accepted and necessary infrastructure has been
set up. For further background or technical infomation, please see
http://www.nexaweb.com/open/xap and http://www.openxal.org for more
details.
2.1 External Dependencies of the project
None.
3. Identify the ASF resources to be created
3.1 mailing list(s)
* xap-ppmc (with moderated subscriptions)
* xap-dev
* xap-commits
* xap-user
3.2 Subversion repository
* https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/xap
3.3 Jira
* xap
4. Identify the initial set of committers:
* Atsuko Pien
* Scott Boyd
* Robert Buffone
* Cliff Schmidt
* Coach Wei
* James Margaris
* Michael Turyn
* Jonathan Levin
* Peter Eacmen
* Animesh Kumar
* Doug Schepers
5. Identify Apache sponsoring individual
Champion: Cliff Schmidt
Mentors: Cliff Schmidt, Susan Wu, Robert Burrell Donkin.
We request that the Apache Incubator PMC sponsor XAP as an incubating
project. There is not currently another TLP that would be an obvious
fit as sponsor for this project. As the project approaches graduation,
we would reevaluate possible TLP destinations and work with others at
Apache to consider whether a new TLP is warranted to include XAP and
possibly other related Apache projects.
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