BCS Software Practice Advancement specialist group
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SPA-209 - The Battle for the Presentation Layer
Joe Winchester, IBM Hursley United Kingdom Ltd. Laboratories
18:30-20:00, Wednesday 4th July 2007
(Complimentary sandwiches and refreshments from 6pm)
Venue: BCS Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA
Admission Free. Please pre-register as soon as possible under
http://bcs-spa.org/cgi-bin/view/SPA/BattleForPresentationLayer . BCS London
insists on being furnished with a complete list of expected attendees by
close of business one week before the meeting (in this case, Wednesday 28th
June). This is both for security reasons and so that they can order the
right amount of food.
Please download and print out a meeting flyer from the above URL to display
at your place of work. There you will also find a location map.
Synopsis
Client-server computing over the last twenty years has wrestled with the
issue of who does what. Servers are great at scalability, security, hosting
databases, reliability, transaction processing, and other big iron IT tasks.
Personal computeršs operating systems excel at windowing, graphics, and
being the point of contact between the user and the application.
The pendulum has swung back and forth between roles, with top heavy client
applications being initially oversold, succeeded by the web that propelled
server frameworks like J2EE and .NET ASP to the forefront and the browser as
the ubiquitous client. Recently however the client is enjoying a renaissance
as usability becomes the issue for IT deployment, rather than systems
management or ease of deployment.
The web model is taking advantage of technologies like AJAX, Adobe Flex,
Laszlo and others that enhance the browser experience, while client side
frameworks like Java Swing under Mustang, Eclipse RCP and Microsoft XAML and
WPF make old style client server computing attractive once more. SOA also
neutralizes the end points in any client server topology in much the same
way HTML did for the user to server interaction, making it open season again
on the whole issue of "who does the client best and what logic lies where".
The objectives of the session are to give an overview of client server
computing over the last twenty years. The focus is on how this has affected
the user interface with issues like responsiveness, latency, and basic
engineering problems that have been encountered. The message is that the
user has had to suffer engineering problems and that very little progress
has been made since the 1970s. To illustrate this, the background of the
modern GUI will be discussed, as well as the various choices that have led
to today's computing GUI paradigm. By driving the engineering constraints by
which GUIs can be created, the various client server architectures limit the
advancement of the user experience which, in many ways, has gone backwards
in terms of response times, consistency and ease of use. This talk discusses
the evolution of the modern browser and desktop GUI and talks about the
pendulum swing between the two, as well as what the future holds for GUI
development.
It may be the turn of client frameworks to win the next battle, depending on
whether the current browser-based model has run out of runway.
Speaker Biography
Joe Winchester is a lead developer for WebSphere Application Developer
(previously WebSphere Studio). He works in the IBM Hursley United Kingdom
Ltd Labs as a senior software engineer. He frequently contributes articles
to DeveloperWorks and to the IBM Technical Journal and has presented at Java
One Online and at the Burton Group's Catalyst conference.
----- ooo OOO ooo -----
UNICOM is organising a seminar on the topic of "Agile and Test-driven
Development: Skills and methodologies to improve and expedite software
delivery" 3-4 July 2007, London. BCS SPA is pleased to endorse and bring
this event to your attention - some of our members will be on the programme.
Please see www.unicom.co.uk for details.
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BCS SPA Home Page - http://bcs-spa.org/
Meetings Schedules
London - http://bcs-spa.org/cgi-bin/view/SPA/PreRegistrations
Cambridge -
http://bcs-spa.org/cgi-bin/view/SPA/SPACambridgeEveningMeetingProgramme
Guernsey - http://ciagile.org/
Presentation materials from previous talks are now available from the BCS
SPA resources site: http://bcs-spa.org/previousmeetings.html
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SPA Meetings Programme Organiser -
Immo Huneke, Zuhlke Engineering Ltd. [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
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Forthcoming meetings:
* 16th July: London MiniSPA 1-day - http://bcs-spa.org/minispa2007.html
* 5th September: SPA-210 (topic TBA)
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